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I think our first reaction when meeting someone we label them. That's why I remember a good and not-so-old post from a very own user about labels and stereotypes .
We are humans and that's our nature. However, sometimes we go very irrationally in judging someone, and instead of asking for more, knowing more about the person we close ourselves to this judgment is sometimes a bad decision. I am a person that receives some types of behavior as red flags, and once I received them I tend to hate these people. Personally, I don't like people who brag a lot about themselves. Even knowing that most of the time those are the most insecure people, I don't like them and see them as "jerks" who want to show everyone that they are better than others.
Another example that it happens a lot to me when we have the opportunity to teach we know students and on our first contact with students we make some bad judgments about their capacities. Of course that a good teacher doesn't expose these feelings right? I know teachers that expose that and in the end, oppress the student. You don't give a chance for them to prove themselves. I prefer to keep these feelings with me because I know that everyone has a certain potential to prove themselves.
In my previous job, I used to have high school students have a summer experience with Bioinformatics, it was good for them and also for me to get more teaching experience. My first student was easy to select, he had previous experience with some programming so I wasn't wrong to give him the opportunity to learn how to apply programming skills in biology research. However, in the next year, I got in my hands only C.V. from students with no experience at all in programming, and it is very difficult to analyze C.V. from students whose doesn't have any previous experience in research, programming, or any skills that we need for that. What I did was to see their willingness to learn about Biology + Bioinformatics. But I think that would be normal for the student in the half of the path to just give up after checking that it isn't their thing to do that.
So I selected a person that during many times I thought didn't have any joy in doing what she was doing. She was a very closed person but that was her way to be. I thought that she was going to give up anytime soon. However, I "burned my tongue". She produced nice results and graphics that are included in one work that we submitted to a journal. I told her that she did a great job and I would work as a reference when she needed it. I hope she is fine because every time that I try to contact her, she still doesn't open up about her life so much and I don't know what she is doing right now.
However, unfortunately, sometimes I am right about my judgments. I had a colleague that I didn't like since the beginning, the way that he got a job wasn't cool in my point of view. He got the job for a position that didn't exist, they created it because he was a known person in the local community and he used to brag a lot about his accomplishments which in my point of view were good accomplishments but similar to other people like me and others in the same position. He was selling his fish as the ultimate solution for all the problems. However in the end who solved most of the problems that got in our hands? Me... but still he continued to sell him in the workplace as the person with the best solutions which I disagreed with in some of the moments but still it was difficult to convince him that he didn't choose the right solution. But in the end, the initial judgment that I made just grew more with his next actions. And even now that I am working tons of miles away from this job, I still hear this type of problem-related to this same person. So my judgments aren't always incorrect, right?
Judgments are a normal thing to happen from a human point of view. However, we need to be rational and keep them to ourselves and try to analyze with more calmly if they are correct. Judging people and showing them how you judge can be based on prejudice and oppress the development of the other as a human.