Dont't Judge a Book By It's Cover

This song doesn't actually go with this blog post, but I couldn't think of a song that really did so instead, I decided just to post the song that I am listening to as I write this :)

 

"Don't judge a book by its cover." We have all heard this saying many times throughout our lives, and yet we still do, whether it is a conscious action or not, that is how we as human's operate. Everyday we make judgements about those we encounter. These judgements are based off many different factors including appearance, the way someone dresses, as well as non-verbal cues and their behavior. All these work together to help us form an impression of someone.

This is me in high school:

I was a 2 sport Letterman (swimming and water polo). I was in all honors or AP classes and...I hung out with the "skater kids". (Not what you would expect I know, but that is kind of the point.) People would always look at me funny when they saw me hanging out with my friends at school because here I was the clean cut, smart, "jock girl" hanging out with a bunch of kids that were seen as "stoners" and had facial piercings and multicolored hair. I had friends from my team or other friends who were in sports who would always point out how I "didn't belong with that group" or that I "was better than them" or a mixture of the two. The thing is, is that the only reason that it was a big deal was that I didn't fit in with those people's group schema (stereotype) of what "skater kids" were.

These are some of my best friends from when I lived in Hawai'i (yes that is actually how you spell Hawai'i) 

Not one of these kids smoked weed, in fact Taylor (on the left) has Cystic Fibrosis (a lung disease) and absolutely hates the idea of smoking of any kind, Vanessa (in the middle) graduated in the top 5% of her class, Brett (the only guy) is a christian and plays the drums in his church's worship group, and Aerial (in the hat) is married and expecting her first child. But because of the way they looked, people judged them and associated them with "stoners" because of those peoples' group schema about what "stoners" were 

This leads me to the implicit personality theory. This theory ( Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954, Sedikides & Anderson, 1994) is a network of assumptions people make about the relationships among traites and behaviors. Because my friends had piercings, tattoos and dressed a certain way, people associated them with "stoners". And because people knew me as an athlete with a good gpa and because I didn't have piercings and tattoos and so forth, people didn't see how I could be friends with them. In all actuality we all had a lot in common.

Maybe, if we actually listened to that years old adage "don't judge a book by its cover", we would realize that there is more to people than what meets the eye. 

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