PROMPT: Character

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Are you a good judge of character?

I’m good at judging who IS a character, but probably not so much a judge of who HAS character. People are demonstrably overestimative of their ability to draw conclusions about other people’s internal characteristics. (I cite as an example that study about interview subjects asked to hold either warm or cold coffee in the hand they would use to shake interviewer’s hands.) So, I’m probably better than people who think they are good at it, while still not being good at it.

6 thoughts on “PROMPT: Character”

    • I think understanding the matched / mismatched idea that Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his book, “Talking to Strangers” is important. For many people, the expressive self does not at all reflect their internal experience, and in dealing with such a person, the chance of misjudging their true nature is great. Also, just understanding that our brains love to apply selection bias to make us feel comfortable that we have an understanding of our world is important. More simply, we vividly remember the times we got it right, while removing our failures from the calculus. (Perhaps not forgetting the fails, but putting them in a different box so they don’t injure our high opinion of ourselves, and — more importantly — the feeling that we are the masters of our domains.)

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      • True, Gladwell’s concept of matched/mismatched communication in ‘Talking to Strangers’ sheds light on the discrepancy between expressive selves and internal experiences, highlighting the risk of misjudgment and the impact of selection bias in shaping our perceptions.

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