One way is to avoid the common cognitive fallacy known as the fundamental attribution error.
This common mistake in thinking is where an individual ignores environmental factors that cause people to act in a certain way.
To understand this more clearly let's use an example:
Say you are driving down the street and you see someone trip or slip, we may attribute that person with a certain level of clumsiness, a part of their core personality, instead of seeing environmental factors such as a loose paving stone or a banana skin😁
To avoid an overly judgemental outlook, it's crucial to take into consideration various factors that may contribute to behavior. This is infinitely easier to say than to practice, but we can get better at practicing by playing Devil's advocate.
Next time you're out buying something and the sales clerk is miserable, try not to leap to conclusions like that person is always miserable or they are unpleasant. Instead reflect on what factors could be causing that behavior, you'll see that in all probability that person might have an infinite number of reasons for being so.
Learning to consider environmental factors will not only enable you to be less judgemental but also potentially improve relationships.
Daniel has a great point and I agree a hundred percent. There's just one more thing I want to mention and I think is really important. It is the awareness not to project our own experiences on someone else's. Let's say someone is telling us a story that triggers us and looks so similar to the one we've experienced, it's easy for our brain to come up with a fast similar conclusion and judgment.I often hear psychologist saying that they sometimes notice themselves getting into this brain trap but they are really aware and able to snap out of it fast.
@Natalija That's absolutely right. It's so difficult not to allow prior bias to influence our objectivity. Easier said then done, since so much of our abiity to learn, and apply inferential logic relies on us using prior experience to figure out the present.
But as you say this can backfire in psychological assessment.
One way is to avoid the common cognitive fallacy known as the fundamental attribution error.
This common mistake in thinking is where an individual ignores environmental factors that cause people to act in a certain way.
To understand this more clearly let's use an example:
Say you are driving down the street and you see someone trip or slip, we may attribute that person with a certain level of clumsiness, a part of their core personality, instead of seeing environmental factors such as a loose paving stone or a banana skin😁
To avoid an overly judgemental outlook, it's crucial to take into consideration various factors that may contribute to behavior. This is infinitely easier to say than to practice, but we can get better at practicing by playing Devil's advocate.
Next time you're out buying something and the sales clerk is miserable, try not to leap to conclusions like that person is always miserable or they are unpleasant. Instead reflect on what factors could be causing that behavior, you'll see that in all probability that person might have an infinite number of reasons for being so.
Learning to consider environmental factors will not only enable you to be less judgemental but also potentially improve relationships.
Helpful links
More info on the fundamental attribution error can be found here: https://www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.html
A pretty comprehensive list of cognitive biases can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases