Оценочность речи ( How to stop being so judgmental)
How to stop being so judgmental
Nobody likes feeling judged. We don’t like other people feeling so high and mighty as to judge us. I bet you’re more judgmental than you realize. Here’s how to raise your awareness of it, reduce it, annoy people less, and share more about yourself.
I bet you don’t realize how judgmental you seem to others, even if you don’t intend it. Nor, I bet, do people making you feel judged realize how much they seem judgmental.
Why not? Because judgment is in our language. It doesn’t have to, but it often is. My exercise on avoiding judgmental words from a few months ago continues to surprise me as it makes me more aware of my own and others’ speech. I’m re-posting about the exercise because I keep getting reminded of its value.
To be precise, judging isn’t the issue. Judging is an internal thought process we all do. Our internal thoughts and beliefs don’t hurt or affect anyone except in how we communicate them and behave. Behavior and communication matter.
It’s amazing how much common everyday speech leads people to sound judgmental, even when they try not to. Then it’s amazing how many arguments and how much conflict result from it.
You can avoid nearly all of it by replacing judgment with statements of opinion.
How to avoid seeming judgmental
To experience it for yourself, try the exercise: For a week, replace the following judgmental words with non-judgmental ones: good, bad, right, wrong, better, worse, positive, negative, true, false. They all have synonyms you can avoid too, like terrible, awesome, great.
I’m not saying never to use them. I’m suggesting avoiding them for a week will reveal to you how much you and others communicate judgment without realizing it. I’m suggesting you’ll find the alternatives share more about yourself without provoking arguments. I’m suggesting you’ll learn about yourself.
I bet after the exercise you’ll find yourself using such words less and sharing more about yourself. I’d love to hear feedback from people who try it.
Examples
The following almost always replace inflammatory or antagonistic speech with statements about your beliefs and opinions. They promote sharing and learning about each other instead of putting people down.
- You can replace good or bad with like or don’t like or explaining your reasons: “The movie was bad” becomes “I didn’t like the movie” or “I didn’t find the characters compelling.”
- You can replace right or wrong with agreement or disagreement or explaining yourself: “You’re wrong” becomes “I disagree” or “I don’t think your arguments support your conclusions.”
- You can omit statements or clauses about truth: “The truth is that Obama is President” becomes “Obama is President.”
- You can omit statements or clauses about reality: “In the real world we have to work for a living” becomes “People have to work for a living.”
- You can also change statements about truth and reality to statements about belief: “I believe everyone has to work for a living.”
Advanced
After avoiding communicating judgmental words, avoid judgmental concepts. Avoid assuming everyone will agree on what you consider “balanced,” “practical,” “pragmatic,” or “a fact”.
Edit (August 14, 2011): Continued this post tomorrow in More thoughts on being less judgmental.
Edit (August 15, 2011): I left out one of the main judgmental words: should (also its synonym, ought to). Telling someone what they should or shouldn’t do implies you are imposing your values on them and likely disregarding theirs - a great way to antagonize someone.
A reader wrote, in response to Friday’s post “How to stop being so judgmental,”
Thanks Joshua for the insight on judgement. I have used less negative words and have already replaced them with a more positive intake on certain topics to avoid negativity. By doing so, I have noticed a more positive reaction from peers and friends, which leads to more productive outakes on actions in a general sense. Thanks!
First, thank you for the rewarding feedback and you’re welcome if I’ve helped you make your life more like you want it. I can think of little more rewarding than to contribute to someone improve their life.
You touched on a fine point I hadn’t clarified in the post. Frankly, I haven’t completely clarified it to myself (partly leading to the length of this post, which is, in part, newly exploring some ideas). That point is to distinguish between three distinct acts: not judging at all, judging positively, and expressing one’s judgment.
Regarding not judging at all, I don’t believe anyone can avoid judging. As best I can tell it’s part of how we’re wired. One of my most meaningful strategies, “Always interpret everything positively,” explicitly judges, but purely internally, for myself, according to my values and tastes, implying nothing to anyone else about theirs.
Regarding expressing judgment, I found using judgmental words antagonized people and avoiding them avoided arguments so I try to avoid using them - even positive judgment(though see tomorrow’s post for exceptions).
Why avoid expressing even positive judgment? For one thing, you can’t judge positively without implying negative judgment other times. For example, say someone gives you three gifts. Say you love the first and express positive judgment, saying “It’s great!” Then say you love the second and again say “It’s great!” Now say you don’t love the third. What can you say to avoid expressing negative judgment?
People who try to express only positive judgment get caught in such traps all the time - often without realizing it. Others readily sense implicit judgment, especially of themselves, often without consciously realizing it, in which case it can seem hypocritical or creepy if the person expressing judgment seems to think they aren’t being judgmental.
For another thing, going back to reasons to avoid expressing positive judgment, judging means evaluating based on a set of values. When you express judgment of someone, you imply your values are more important than theirs. Since people have reasons for their values, they will perceive you as not understanding what supports their values. Since their values are ipso facto important to them - in fact, the most important things to them - your credibility will decrease in their eyes. What hurts a relationship more than lowering your credibility?
I wouldn’t suggest avoiding expressing judgment, even positive, if I didn’t have alternatives. Also, recognizing my advice being unsolicited, I welcome constructive criticism on it.
The first alternative is to express the criteria leading to the judgment. I find expressing my criteria conveys clearer meaning without antagonizing. It shares information about me without suggesting others have to agree with me. Regarding those three gifts in the example above, sharing what about them I like, find useful, or whatever led me to think they were great tells them about myself. Such information leads to better gifts! Likewise, sharing what led me not to like or find useful in the third one doesn’t say the gift or giver is bad, it says something about myself and my tastes.
Thinking of what to share takes more thought, I find, than merely expressing judgment, but I’ve also found the results worth the effort - more understanding and fewer arguments. It gets easier with practice.
The second alternative is to keep quiet on evaluation, perhaps showing appreciation or gratitude for someone’s effort. When someone gives you a gift, you can simply say “thank you.”Feedforward uses this principle. Using feedforward reinforces how much more showing appreciation instead of judgment wins friends and influences people.
http://joshuaspodek.com/stop-judgmental
http://joshuaspodek.com/thoughts-being-less-judgmental