# Are You a Good Judge of Character?



## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

I consider myself a good judge of character. I'm one of those people who can usually tell if there's something "off" -- i.e. phony or even sociopathic -- about a person, and I can often tell this within the first few minutes of meeting her/him for the first time. And I find that my initial impressions of people are usually valid. By this I mean that several times in my life I've had suspicions about people long before these seemingly "okay" individuals showed their "true colors" and got caught doing something dishonest or illegal, or otherwise showed that all their "niceness" was just an act.

How about you? Are you generally an accurate judge of character, and do you have any stories to share?


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I don't, but my wife has radar, so I take her everywhere.


----------



## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

I'll tell a story from my own experience. My former supervisor was a young woman all the kids (I teach in a tutoring center) liked. She was a very outgoing person. I'm an introvert myself, yet though she wasn't my "type" personality-wise there was no obvious reason for me not to like her. And yet from the first day I met her, I distrusted her. Again, she seemed perfectly okay, but for whatever reason I thought to myself, "I bet she's the type who could be really nasty when none of _her_ superiors were around to see." It struck me too that she might have been a bully when she was in school. Well, I found out today that she was fired for having made inappropriately harsh comments to some of the students, for swearing around them (the students who attend the center are as young as 6), and for slacking off on certain parts of her job. I never saw any of this myself, but somehow or other I always sensed she wasn't as wonderful as she appeared to be.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Sometimes I am and sometimes I am not.

I have several times accurately guessed when people are pretending to know things but don't - but on the other hand, I don't expect dishonesty and I usually believe people's pleas for sympathy & am surprised when I find out that they were lying.

An anecdote that illustrates my naivety - we were visiting York and every time we passed through St Helen's Square we were accosted by a man trying to get us to buy a joke book. In the end, after we'd let him do his spiel, I had to buy a book after he said that he'd turned to this after being laid off from work & made redundant when he had a mortgage to pay. He was a quick-witted & sympathetic man - but when I got home, the jokes were the filthiest that I've ever read!

Still, I felt pleased that I'd helped him out - until I read that the problem of the joke book sellers has been around for five years & saying that you've been laid off is just a selling ploy!

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowU...en_s_Square-York_North_Yorkshire_England.html


----------



## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Sometimes I am and sometimes I am not.
> 
> I have several times accurately guessed when people are pretending to know things but don't - but on the other hand, I don't expect dishonesty and I usually believe people's pleas for sympathy & am surprised when I find out that they were lying.
> 
> ...


At first I thought your post said "New York," and as an American who was born in New York I felt embarrassed that you experienced something like that while visiting there!


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Ingélou said:


> Sometimes I am and sometimes I am not.
> 
> I have several times accurately guessed when people are pretending to know things but don't - but on the other hand, I don't expect dishonesty and I usually believe people's pleas for sympathy & am surprised when I find out that they were lying.
> 
> ...



"Never buy anything on the street, or on the phone."


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Bellinilover, eventually we all screw up. I'm glad there's watchdogs like you around.


----------



## SarahNorthman (Nov 19, 2014)

I like to think I am yes. I think like most people that was a bit clouded in my teenage years, but I am quite over that now.


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I am an extremely harsh judge of my own character and overcomplicate my understanding of others sometimes(which I have to tell myself, "don't trust your speculative nonsense" sometimes), or else I have a higher tolerance/less fear of most nasty people. I've hit rock bottom in some respects at times, so you'd have to be pretty nasty and on the prowl about it(or I'd have to feel they were a threat to someone I felt protective about), before any radar I might have, would start to go off.


----------



## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Vaneyes said:


> Bellinilover, eventually we all screw up. I'm glad there's watchdogs like you around.


Anybody can make a mistake; I mean, I've done plenty of things I'm embarrassed about now. But I think there's a difference between just messing up every once in a while, and pretending to be something you're not -- being phony -- which is more the sort of thing I'm talking about. Another example would be back when I was Catholic, there was this seemingly pleasant parish priest who always gave me a very bad feeling -- and later we found out he had embezzled parish funds and done things that were...well, let's just say they were even worse. I'd say that's a much deeper character issue than having good intentions that you occasionally fail to realize. With my boss, the problem was that she acted differently when she was alone with the students than she did when her superiors were observing her with them. Eventually, one or more of the students told their parents, the parents called the center director, and the rest is history.

Edited to add: I suppose a lot of what I'm talking about here relates to intuition (just having a positive or a negative "gut feeling about someone"); I know that subtle things like body language can say a lot about who a person genuinely is.


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

clavichorder said:


> I am an extremely harsh judge of my own character and overcomplicate my understanding of others sometimes(which I have to tell myself, "don't trust your speculative nonsense" sometimes), or else I have a higher tolerance/less fear of most nasty people. I've hit rock bottom in some respects at times, so you'd have to be pretty nasty and on the prowl about it(or I'd have to feel they were a threat to someone I felt protective about), before any radar I might have, would start to go off.


To this part I can so relate, almost never wrong.


----------



## Potiphera (Mar 24, 2011)

I consider myself a fairly good judge of character, i can get it wrong but not often. 
The bible says thou shall not judge people, and, first take out the plank in you own eye first, but I think judgment is important when it comes to employing people like doctors, nurses, or anyone in a position of authority. 
Discernment is important too.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

When it comes to discernment, I think I'm pretty good at telling if someone is hiding their anger. I judge words and tone of voice quite strongly, and I can sense when something is said with even the smallest hint of sarcasm or falseness. Someone that hides their anger with sarcasm on a regular basis I consider a red flag. It probably means they're going to use it against you too, if they haven't yet already. It also means they have a problem communicating with people in a healthy fashion. One can either just avoid those people, or attempt vainly to fix them, or instead still be their friend and let them do it, albeit with some consequences. I would still maintain a friendship with that person, but I wouldn't trust them with serious information about myself.


----------



## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> When it comes to discernment, I think I'm pretty good at telling if someone is hiding their anger. I judge words and tone of voice quite strongly, and I can sense when something is said with even the smallest hint of sarcasm or falseness. Someone that hides their anger with sarcasm on a regular basis I consider a red flag. It probably means they're going to use it against you too, if they haven't yet already. It also means they have a problem communicating with people in a healthy fashion. One can either just avoid those people, or attempt vainly to fix them, or instead still be their friend and let them do it, albeit with some consequences. I would still maintain a friendship with that person, but I wouldn't trust them with serious information about myself.


I think my judgement is pretty good, my wife's even better, but each of us has sometimes made the wrong call. Fortunately, none of those had serious consequences. What has been most frustrating, however, was when we have been able to detect no-goods but unable to convince others to avoid them before they were able to do harm. One such episode involved embezzlement from a charity by someone everyone else trusted but we felt was up to something, and the result was the end of a community program that had been in operation for years. That person is now a fugitive who fled to another state, but the damage was permanent. We had the grace to never say "we told you so," but reality did that for us.


----------



## Guest (Aug 28, 2016)

Ingélou said:


> Sometimes I am and sometimes I am not.
> 
> I have several times accurately guessed when people are pretending to know things but don't - but on the other hand, I don't expect dishonesty and I usually believe people's pleas for sympathy & am surprised when I find out that they were lying.
> 
> ...


Never mind, we fell for it in March! We avoided him this time....!


----------



## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> When it comes to discernment, I think I'm pretty good at telling if someone is hiding their anger. I judge words and tone of voice quite strongly, and I can sense when something is said with even the smallest hint of sarcasm or falseness. Someone that hides their anger with sarcasm on a regular basis I consider a red flag. It probably means they're going to use it against you too, if they haven't yet already. It also means they have a problem communicating with people in a healthy fashion. One can either just avoid those people, or attempt vainly to fix them, or instead still be their friend and let them do it, albeit with some consequences. I would still maintain a friendship with that person, but I wouldn't trust them with serious information about myself.


Sarcasm to me always suggests that someone is trying to hide some insecurity. This other woman I work with is extremely intelligent (she's got an advanced degree in math, a subject I've never been able to master), but she talks constantly in a sarcastic and "superior" tone of voice. It makes me wonder how intelligent _she_ really thinks _she_ is.


----------



## SarahNorthman (Nov 19, 2014)

Bellinilover said:


> Sarcasm to me always suggests that someone is trying to hide some insecurity. This other woman I work with is extremely intelligent (she's got an advanced degree in math, a subject I've never been able to master), but she talks constantly in a sarcastic and "superior" tone of voice. It makes me wonder how intelligent _she_ really thinks _she_ is.


Hmmm this makes me wonder about myself and how I may come off to others.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I don't know if I'm an especially good judge of character, but I once knew a young woman who immediately struck me as strange. She projected outward optimism and empathy but there was something that felt very different. At some point it hit me that she had almost no sense of self-esteem. Having had a girlfriend in the past who severely lacked self-esteem, I think I was familiar with the signs (which she tried hard to hide, but not hard enough).

It finally did come out that, yes, this was exactly how she felt: that she was worthless and everyone else around her was better than she was.

I really felt for her, because she wasn't about to admit to her problem and do something to correct it, and because I was afraid that it would lead her into bad decisions in life.


----------



## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

On the whole I like to think that I am a reasonably good judge of character (provided the character I'm expected to judge is acting _comme d'habitude_).

Thirty years ago, when I lived in a bedsit in London, I used to frequent a second hand bookshop the owner of which was a fairly cynical South African expat. We used to go out drinking (i.e. crossing the road to the nearest pub) frequently. I assumed that _he_ was a good judge of character, what with being older than me and having knocked about the world a bit.

Although the shop was about the size of a telephone kiosk several regulars used to meet in there for a chinwag. One day I went in and found an unprepossessing chap (shabby anorak, nylon shirt etc) in the middle of a tale about how he'd foiled a street robbery. Then he claimed he was Emma Freud's boyfriend. I thought this sounded a bit fanciful but the bookshop owner seemed to believe it. So we all sat there listening to tales of what Emma had said and done etc.

Over the next two or three weeks this character was often in residence. One day he suggested that everyone present get in a cab and go to a club where we would meet (if memory serves me right) Freddie Mercury and other celebs. I agreed to be part of this to see what would happen. Oddly enough, Emma's beau never seemed to be carrying ready money, so I ended up paying for the cab. Needless to say, we sat in an overpriced cellar in which no celebrities manifested themselves. Eventually I decided to leave. A few days later I went into the bookshop to find the owner fuming because he'd discovered that the golden boy was a patient at the local psychiatric hospital and had borrowed a fair amount of money which was never going to get repaid.

I thought the bloke was an unlikely boyfriend for Emma Freud but because the bookshop owner seemed to take him seriously, so did I.

Ramble over.


----------



## Ginger (Jul 14, 2016)

I´m very fond of meeting new people, I like to learn about their character and attitudes and I like to "observe" them a little bit. So maybe I have a little bit of experience with different characters. For example last week I was on holiday and a met a woman, who seemed very nice and open to me. And as soon as we started a conversation I thought "teacher!". After five minutes I couldn´t hold my curiosity so I asked her about her job. She said "Guess!" And I told her my suspicion. She laughed "How do you know???". Then I even guessed the subjects she was teaching and she said "I feel seen through....."


----------



## Guest (Aug 29, 2016)

I reckon I'm a pretty good judge of character. Every time I look in the mirror I say to myself: "Yep, that's a good fellow with a heart of gold. Probably brainy, too, I reckon." My _toilette_ preparations usually last around 55 minutes.


----------



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I try not to prejudge a person until I feel I know that person better. Prejudging is not a good thing.


----------



## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> I try not to prejudge a person until I feel I know that person better. Prejudging is not a good thing.


Generally, a proper attitude. But sometimes, you just _know_. Not all communication is with the conscious mind. Call it intuition, or subconscious yet valid observations, but within short periods of time after meeting some people, you can know much about that person's character that is subsequently confirmed. Surely you have felt that sort of thing in your life.


----------



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

If I am to hypothesise about a person, I need something concrete to get me started, some sort of data that I can draw conclusions from. Population groups are easier to figure out, because there's more data about them and such a thing as "average" starts having meaning. There's no such thing as "an average" about a specific individual, in other words a particular individual can theoretically always surprise you, but population groups will tend toward an average of one sort or another.

One strange exception: I think I've noticed that the way a person looks often - creepily often - predicts what kind of individuals they are, especially in extreme cases. For example, I've noticed this when reading news about VIP pedophiles and the one single person in the parliament who tried to do something about it before it was news. The contrast between those two was so striking, and it's something that seems to recur. It's almost as if evil genetics express themselves as an evil facial and skull structure, and hero genetics express themselves in like fashion. Or as though these people have been chosen to be part of some sort of play by the fates. After all, you wouldn't choose a cast of actors that don't look their part.


----------



## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

SarahNorthman said:


> I like to think I am yes. I think like most people that was a bit clouded in my teenage years, but I am quite over that now.


Much like any of us, I suspect.


----------



## Guest (Aug 30, 2016)

TalkingHead said:


> I reckon I'm a pretty good judge of character. Every time I look in the mirror I say to myself: "Yep, that's a good fellow with a heart of gold. Probably brainy, too, I reckon." My _toilette_ preparations usually last around 55 minutes.


Good to hear you've managed to get it under an hour.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

"Are You a Good Judge of Character?"
Yes. I am convinced that there are several characters among our membership. Some members 'of good character' too (not necessarily the same people). And there was _moody_, who was both.


----------



## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

No, cannot say I am. I used to think I am, but later I've learned that most people just fake things and pretend to be something else they are.

I was a very slow developer and other kids laughed behind my back, they thought I'm retarded, or at least stupid. When I grew older, that seemed to went away, but I've found it's all the same. Adults are just not that straight. Very disappointing finding, I always thought people are like what I think about myself - brutally straight and honest. So I guess I really suck at judging people... But I don't really care about it anymore, it has just made a bit more cautious when it comes to daily interaction with people. I just try to be myself and let others be as well.


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

No, like apparently most others here, I´m not always the best to identify and facilitate the best in other people.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

In answer to the question posed - not on this forum I'm not. :lol:


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

When I was working in a manufacturing job, I could tell within a few minutes whether someone was going to be a good worker or not.
I also had a negative reaction to a guy there who would not cooperate, and I made several complaints in writing about him, which were ignored. Later on, he & another guy were caught up in the ceiling, over the women's toilet, looking down through a peephole they had made.
They got let go, I felt vindicated, and the women felt violated.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> When I was working in a manufacturing job, I could tell within a few minutes whether someone was going to be a good worker or not.
> I also had a negative reaction to a guy there who would not cooperate, and I made several complaints in writing about him, which were ignored. Later on, he & another guy were caught up in the ceiling, over the women's toilet, looking down through a peephole they had made.
> They got let go, I felt vindicated, and the women felt violated.


I can sympathise with you here. In the Civil Service it was nigh impossible to get rid of someone unless they really overstepped the mark by say murder! Merely grassing someone up cut no ice with the powers that be unless it personally impinged on them in some manner. Ah, employment laws, - not to be entered into lightly!


----------



## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

I used to think that I was an OK judge of character, albeit whilst trying not to be judgemental. Then this happened.
Someone with whom I had worked for over 30 years and who I regarded as a friend suddenly went on extended leave. Like many others, I assumed he was ill. This friend had been an exemplary colleague over the years and very supportive of others when they were going through a bad time.
Then I heard that he had been arrested.
And then I heard that he was pleading guilty to a serious charge of downloading and distributing indecent images of children.
My sense of shock and confusion defies description. Good judge of character? Apparently not.


----------



## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

SarahNorthman said:


> Hmmm this makes me wonder about myself and how I may come off to others.


Actually, I should have said "sometimes" rather than "always." There's a kind of sarcasm that has some self-deprecation in it -- which is _not_ the kind the woman I'm describing has. I don't think I've ever heard this person make a joke at _her own_ expense.


----------



## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

TalkingHead said:


> I reckon I'm a pretty good judge of character. Every time I look in the mirror I say to myself: "Yep, that's a good fellow with a heart of gold. Probably brainy, too, I reckon." My _toilette_ preparations usually last around 55 minutes.


Oop. Wash face, brush teeth, shave, comb, clean the sink is ten minutes, if I feel like taking my time. But I have a good support group.


----------



## Harmonie (Mar 24, 2007)

I'm *not* a good judge of character at all. Nor am I good at reading people. No wonder my mom is so scared of me living on my own and dating. lol Well, I haven't dated in eight years - why would that change now?


----------



## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

Pat Fairlea said:


> I used to think that I was an OK judge of character, albeit whilst trying not to be judgemental. Then this happened.
> Someone with whom I had worked for over 30 years and who I regarded as a friend suddenly went on extended leave. Like many others, I assumed he was ill. This friend had been an exemplary colleague over the years and very supportive of others when they were going through a bad time.
> Then I heard that he had been arrested.
> And then I heard that he was pleading guilty to a serious charge of downloading and distributing indecent images of children.
> *My sense of shock and confusion defies description. Good judge of character? Apparently not.*


This one instance does not invalidate your judgement abilities. Very little in life proceeds with 100% reliability, and even the most perceptive of us makes the occasional bad call. Put it down to "Oh, well, who'd have guessed?" and resume confidence in your ability to judge character. Chances are that overall you have been far more right than wrong.


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Lenny said:


> No, cannot say I am. I used to think I am, but later I've learned that most people just fake things and pretend to be something else they are.
> 
> I was a very slow developer and other kids laughed behind my back, they thought I'm retarded, or at least stupid. When I grew older, that seemed to went away, but I've found it's all the same. Adults are just not that straight. Very disappointing finding, I always thought people are like what I think about myself - brutally straight and honest. So I guess I really suck at judging people... But I don't really care about it anymore, it has just made a bit more cautious when it comes to daily interaction with people. I just try to be myself and let others be as well.


My story is not exactly parallel to this, but there are some similarities. The difference is I believe I caught a better whiff of some of the subtleties of people around me but I tried to remind blind to it. You can't do that really, though, if you see it then you deal with it in this case. I'm just finally learning that in order for myself to "be straight" like I believe I mostly once was and perhaps still am to some extent(depending on which population of people you compare me too), I have to both acknowledge what I pick up on and not habitually(which was initially deliberate I suspect), confuse myself about weirdnesses in people and hide from the truth. It is possible I did this out of good motivation, not out of fear. I don't consider myself a "bad person" anymore but I don't feel comfortable expressing anything about myself a good person, though I would like to feel more right with things; but I think that even when I can sense something wrong with a person, I believe in the vast majority of all cases, something good and honest is down there. There is always truth beneath masks, I'd assume.

There are also cases where somebody has something off feeling about them, but you know that they are only interacting with you for a specific purpose and the part they play in your life and vice versa can still be positive. This is how people can get second chances. It is this type of thinking that has enabled me to give myself second chances. I am harsh judge of my own character because I took to heart vilifications I felt people had made of me in middle school and high school. I had never done anything wrong that I was aware of, but lots of people simply didn't like me, or a few expressed that they didn't and it felt like they were the voice of the majority. Self hatred, even based on wrongs done to one, can lead to self fulfilling prophecies if it is nurtured for whatever reason.

There was a man I ran into at the park not long ago. He was clearly odd, but I was odd as hell at the time and not feeling into any of it. He was straightforward from the get go, "I haven't talked to anyone in a long time, may I talk to you guys(I was talking with another man)." I ended up walking with him on the trail in the dark to the grocery store because I had offered to buy him food. He was not like other homeless men I had met. We had a rather esoteric conversation that wasn't overly intellectual, it was a bit freaky and my stomach went funky sometimes, I had chills based on the subject matter not just emanating from my interaction with him directly. But I thought there might be a current of integrity in him that was struggling to help him find some peace or something. I ran into him again later and he looked better. He thanked me for talking to him, said it helped get him moving in a better direction. I saw him again on the bus and he looked better. I don't really know his story, but it is not hard to imagine something could have been really off. Sometimes untrustworthy or frighteningly different people perhaps need to be offered trust from a person who is legitimately brave about a situation and straight curious, or can empathize based on something. If someone is a threat or creep to someone else, it doesn't mean the same universally applies, especially to those who don't feel so deeply vulnerable from them. There will be someone out there who can talk honest things with them. Just some thoughts, not refined at all, and maybe not all filtered.


----------



## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

znapschatz said:


> This one instance does not invalidate your judgement abilities. Very little in life proceeds with 100% reliability, and even the most perceptive of us makes the occasional bad call. Put it down to "Oh, well, who'd have guessed?" and resume confidence in your ability to judge character. Chances are that overall you have been far more right than wrong.


Thanks for that reassurance. I can rationalize the occasional bad call, but this one was so completely out of the blue!


----------



## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

I'm rather excellent. I look at old photographs and go, "This person seems to be like this, this person seems to be like this..." and old people who knew them go, "Well, yeah, they were."


----------



## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

Pat Fairlea said:


> Thanks for that reassurance. I can rationalize the occasional bad call, but this one was so completely out of the blue!


But that's where they always come from! I've had a few, also out of the nowhere, but some people are as good at hiding their true nature as others of us are in detecting it. In real life, sometimes the baddies win (for now.) Whenever not destructive to person or pocketbook, moving on from the deception is best; in any case, not a cause for losing confidence in one's ability to judge character.


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

If somebody has an agenda, they can turn this sort of "character assessment" against whomever they target. The police are the best example, because they have an agenda to "get the bad guy," not necessarily to get to the truth.

Be careful that you don't fall prey to the 'herd mentality' which is fear-driven and can often be symptomatic of a 'mob' mentality. There was a Twilight Zone episode about this. Rod Serling, of course, was in the middle of the 1950s McCarthy scare and Communist paranoia, and blacklisting.

From what I've seen, we are right back in that same place.


----------



## Guest (Aug 31, 2016)

After 26 years of dealing with teens, I could size them up right away. Generally, if a kid sauntered in the room on the first day with his waistline just above his knees and no books or supplies, it didn't bode well for the rest of the year, and I was nearly always right! Conversely, years ago a girl with a burgundy mohawk haircut, torn jeans, a leather jacket covered in punk and metal band logos, and numerous piercings walked into my AP Literature course. I immediately thought she must be in the wrong room, but she wasn't, and she was easily the most insightful writer in the class! Overall, though, I could usually tell who was going to be trouble or a joy.


----------



## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Pat Fairlea said:


> I used to think that I was an OK judge of character, albeit whilst trying not to be judgemental. Then this happened.
> Someone with whom I had worked for over 30 years and who I regarded as a friend suddenly went on extended leave. Like many others, I assumed he was ill. This friend had been an exemplary colleague over the years and very supportive of others when they were going through a bad time.
> Then I heard that he had been arrested.
> And then I heard that he was pleading guilty to a serious charge of downloading and distributing indecent images of children.
> My sense of shock and confusion defies description. Good judge of character? Apparently not.


Don't assume you were a poor judge of character. There are many aspects to a person's character. The guy you talk about may well have been a sterling fellow except for his addiction to child porn.


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

There's only three kinds of people I can't stand. Phonies, *** kissers, and obnoxious personalities.


----------



## Guest (Sep 3, 2016)

Being able to 'judge' is less important than giving everyone you deal with the benefit of the doubt. That is, behave towards them as you wish them to behave towards you until you have concrete evidence that you should do otherwise.

You yourself might thereby be better judged.


----------

