Evaluation and judgement of people

Essay by melissaknottCollege, UndergraduateB+, June 2007

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People come from different backgrounds, race, and genders, we decide what people are by the way they act or look. We sometimes put people into groups based on one person and how they act or where they are from.

We evaluate people on so many different levels. First impressions are not always right; we look at people and decide who and what they are from there, which can turn out to be wrong. Our first thoughts go to how they are dresses and how they present themselves. When engaging conversation we look at how they talk and their accents. Background and ethnicity are also judged whether we admit it or not. We form a schema which is a category that we place people (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). When we learn about other people we form a thought of what that person is and how they act, the more we learn about a person the thought changes.

They play key roles because we make our impressions and they tend to stick for a long time. It is almost like when you meet someone and when they say hello it comes out as a high pitched squeak and then the nickname squeaky comes out and sticks. An impression can go either way depending on how the situation is taken. When first impressions are made we expect people to be exactly what we might think they are. When we make our impressions of other people we will put others like them together. The thing is we judge people and assume they are one thing when they could possibly be something else entirely.

A disadvantage would be either giving or taking on the wrong impressions. For example a man comes towards you, he is filthy from head to toe with a long beard, and...