Wk 6.1: Perceiving without Judging?

It is impossible to perceive others without judging or categorizing them because this is a process that we unconsciously and consciously do in order to create an understanding of our world. As we continuously gain new experiences and information, we tend to create schemata to make the learnt information and knowledge become applicable to the new or incoming information. This, thereby, creates an integral “system” identification and organization, where we may tend to create unfair judgments and instant characterization without taking to account individual differences that changes our idealized representations of a certain kind of person (personal prototypes) and the characteristics that we habitually notice of others, partially due to appearance (personal constructs). We may also fall into acting upon scripts or representations of sequences of action, where we unthinkingly act upon routine, thus pushing us into “mindlessness and repetitive routines” (Trenholm, 51).

To counteract faulty perceptions, judgments and categorization, we must enact mindful processing; in other words, becoming more mindful of our actions, habits, and such, thus improving awareness, creating new understandings and creating more fair judgments. We can also improve our interpretation of the world, since our individual judgment is not the “right one”, rather it is important to understand that we can be confused about a message or misunderstand what someone is trying to communicate. Therefore, we should utilize a perception check to state our interpretation as well as ask and clarify what the other is trying to say, thus minimizing misunderstanding and problems that may occur due to faulty judgments and differences in understanding the message communicated.