Knowing People

I am constantly disturbed at how readily my parents would rely on first impressions to get their measure of people. That is, they're quite happy to have one look at the person and his/her conduct, then decide whether they want to get to know the person better or whether to be friends and such.

The problem here is that they're essentially allowing confirmation bias to rule their heuristic. Say you decide that someone's bad, so you look out for bad things and refuse to get to know the person better. In all probability, even rather excellent specimens of humanity would be prone to making highly visible mistakes from time to time. Should one be looking out for those same defects, one would feel justified in concluding that the said people were just...bad.

Then again, my method is probably not quite suited to what most are used to. It may even be deemed to be socially naive. However, I stand by my belief that people should be given a chance, and that it takes months to truly have an estimate of someone's measure. So even if someone gives me a seriously bad gut reaction, I'd be wary but not dismiss the person offhand. There can be treasure in junk, after all. Of course, if it is proven that the person means me harm, or has no intention whatsoever of being friendly, I think there's no shame in admitting that someone's just not friend material. At the very least, though, try to avoid dismissing anyone offhand.