A Spooky Thing About Humans

Have you ever had a situation with a colleague, friend, or romantic partner where their poor behavior took you by surprise?

A friend recently described a situation where she trusted someone who turned out to not be very trustworthy and yet she still had a bias towards trusting them.

She logically knew that this person was problematic. But her gut feeling about this person hadn't caught up.

This is an interesting thing that our brains do! They form a mental image of somebody based on a first impression, and then because it takes extra work to update our mental maps, we default to this first impression.

It's kind of spooky how doggedly we can hold onto our mental image in the face of a lot of contrary evidence.

And even spookier that some people can use this mental fallacy against us by luring us in by looking one way and then behaving a completely different way once we're in their web.

Here are a few questions that can help to clarify the reality of how someone is showing up in your life:

What is happening now?
Do I like what's happening now?
If this is how things had started, would I have signed up for this?
Would I wish what's currently happening on a friend?
Would I ever treat someone the way I'm being treated?

Then trust your assessment of the current reality over the initial impression.

On the flip side of this, sometimes people can change in positive ways. We may have a not so great impression of them, but then their behavior over time is consistently better than we were expecting.

Watch people's behavior over time and pay attention to the story that behavior is telling you.