Evaluation and Judgement

There are a few different ways that people evaluate others. We as people rely on sets of expectations and beliefs about different categories of other people to form impressions of them. First impressions are the strongest and seem to set that certain expectation of that person in future meetings.

Attribution is another tool used for evaluating other people. To understand another person’s behavior, we make judgments, either internal or external. An external behavior is attributed a personal factor. In determining whether the behavior is internal or external, one relies on three kinds of information about the behavior. How distinctive is the behavior? How consistent is the behavior? What is the consensus of the other’s similar behavior?

One more tool used for evaluating is that of interpersonal attraction is the strongest when proximity brings people into frequent contact. Other reasons of attractiveness can be physical, similarity of attitudes, interests, and values.

How we evaluate people can play a role in our expectation of them. As with first impressions, we set up an idea of how that person will be when we next meet them. There is a visual set of how that person will be. This impression rules how we will behave towards that individual, whether positive or negative. As with attributing reasons of behavior, we use this as a way to evaluate why another’s behavior is acceptable or not, which, in turn, influences our attitude towards another person. Attributing a person’s behavior can leave us with positive or negative mind or reaction.

Just as impressions and attributions leave us with negative or positive reactions in body and mind, so does interpersonal attraction to another. Attractiveness in its many forms gives us the reason to be more frequent in our contact with others or our distance with others.
Evaluating people plays a role in out expectations of others in a way that can be a disadvantage. First impressions can create a biased treatment of others that can cause harm to other’s psychological stability. A stereotype can be born from impressions and become a social cancer that can become the ruination of a people (i.e. extermination of the Jewish people during World War II.)

When making an attribution one is guessing about the true causes of a particular action. There are so many guesses that are vulnerable to a number of prejudices that a true attribution can cause harm. As with making an attribution about another’s behavior that is related to one’s culture. One wrong guess can affect other’s attitude towards a culture in a negative influence. There are disadvantages of physical attraction in that one can become obsessed with making themselves to fit what society labels as physically attractive. People obsessed with filling the mold can become financially and psychologically lost trying to please the very essence of attractiveness.

A person can lose all self-value looking for that one person they are “supposed to be attracted to” but never allowing themselves to be open to those who may be different and offer a different look on life.