Mountain biking the other day, I rounded a tight bend on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail and nearly crashed into a hiker hidden by thick undergrowth. Instinct took over: I slammed my brakes, skidded off the path, and we stopped inches apart. “Just me out here,” he said. “Same here,” I replied. We exhaled and continued on.
It happened so fast my body reacted before my mind labeled “obstacle.” My heart raced, and I realized I’d judged him as a threat first—failing to see his humanity until after the near miss.
Why do we default to snap judgments? Evolution wired us to sort friend from foe, safety from danger. Our System 1 thinking—fast, automatic, bias‑prone—fires first. Only when we pause does System 2 step in, questioning: “Who is this person, really?”
But we often never pause. In the city, you sit at a red light and see a panhandler. You tag him “panhandler,” “distraction,” and move on: errands await. Later, guilt nibbles because you sensed his need but let your biases—and bystander diffusion—silence your compassion. As Terry Warner explores in his book Bonds That Make Us Free, small acts of kindness dissolve the invisible chains of judgment and connect us.
When do we judge people harshly? When fatigue, fear, or a deadline narrows our mental bandwidth. A sharp tone from a stranger, a hurried glance at someone in a hood—our filter bias sees threat before personhood. Experts say we carry unconscious stereotypes that shape every encounter.
Muscle memory saves us in emergencies—hands on brakes, weight shifted back—while our minds catch up. Yet that reflex can misfire on unfamiliar terrain, just like our judgments misfire on unfamiliar people. Only a conscious effort to engage System 2 can override these defaults.
Small gestures—“Good morning,” a smile, offering a granola bar—interrupt our judgments. David Foster Wallace argued that true freedom lies in the daily discipline of noticing others. “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” By exchanging “Good morning,” we choose to signal as neighbor rather than bystander.
Back on the trail, heart still racing, I realized I’d judged first, felt empathy second. The lesson: next time, slow down. Notice the rustle of undergrowth and the person beyond it. Ask: “What story lies behind that silhouette?”
We all overjudge—on trails, at intersections, in boardrooms—when we see labels before lives. Breaking that habit requires small pauses and acts of vulnerability.
On your next ride, drive, or walk, let empathy override instinct. In that space between seeing and reacting, you might glimpse the shared pulse that makes us human.
Sources
- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
- Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald, and Brian A. Nosek, “Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 6 (1998), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_association_test
- Terry A. Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free (2003), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonds_That_Make_Us_Free
- David Foster Wallace, “This Is Water” (2005), https://fs.blog/this-is-water/
- Bibb Latané and John M. Darley, “The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn’t He Help?” (1968), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
