Despite what many would have you believe, making judgements and forming personal opinions about others is a natural part of our normal social behavior. We are constantly forming opinions and making judgements about everyone and everything around us. While at first glance this may sound like a bad thing, in reality, it is both good and bad. If you were to try a new restaurant and you didn’t find the food very good, you’ve formed a negative judgement about the quality of their product. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is your natural opinion. Alternatively, judgements can also be negative, as we have seen through society’s struggle with issues such as racism, sexism and division of socioeconomic statuses. If you chose not to invite the new girl at work to eat lunch with your group of friends because she is a lesbian, that is not a good type of judgement to be making and it is hurtful. Both the good and the bad judgements we make can affect how we perceive similar things in the future.
Researchers have long studied how we form judgements in an attempt to understand how this plays a role in our reasoning and decision-making choices. Decisions are defined as the process of making choices between alternatives (Goldstein, 2011). Do I go back to the bad restaurant to give it a second chance or do I eat somewhere else? This is a good example of a decision that you must make between alternative options. Reasoning is a bit different in that it is the process of drawing conclusions based on some type of evidence (Goldstein, 2011). The new girl is a lesbian and so that must mean she is a bad person because the bible says she is choosing to live in sin. This is a very common example of how a person uses reasoning based on evidence (the bible) to draw conclusions about others. It is up to your personal beliefs to determine if this is a bad or a good conclusion about this woman.
But how do we form these conclusions? One of the main types of reasoning we use to form our judgements about everything in our lives is inductive reasoning; reasoning based on observations, or reaching conclusions based on evidence (Goldstein, 2011). Inductive reasoning starts with a specific statement that is used to draw a conclusion about a larger more general statement (Goldstein, 2011). These conclusions are not absolute truth, they are indicative of what is possibly true based on the evidence in hand. For example: the coffee I had at Starbucks this morning was terrible. Last time I had coffee at that Starbucks, it was bad too. This must mean that all Starbucks coffee tastes bad.
There is logic to this argument, however, a generalization about all Starbucks coffee shops cannot be made based on the experiences at just one location. Therefore, it is possibly true that Starbucks has terrible coffee, but it is not absolutely or definitely true.
When we make a prediction about what will happen in the future or what we believe to be true based on our observations about what has happened in the past, we are using inductive reasoning. Will my car start in the morning? Well, as long as it is in relatively good condition and hasn’t had any issues in the past, it is a safe assumption that it will. This type of automatic reasoning can happen very quickly and often times we are not even aware that are making these assumptions. If we are not careful these same types of automatic assumptions can be made in negative ways, such as with the example above about the judgment of a new coworker.
As you can see, judgements and opinions about the world around us are highly subjective. However, through a further understanding of how people form conclusions through inductive reasoning, we have gained better insight into why people make the decisions they do. We use inductive reasoning to draw conclusions based on some type evidence or previous experience. These conclusions feed into our decision-making process when faced with choosing between different alternative options. Fortunately, and unfortunately, these previous experiences can lead to very strong opinions and it is up to us to be cognizant of how our past may be shaping our interpretation of things in our present and future conditions.
Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive psychology (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.