This thread is full of people who were shocked by the baseless assumptions someone else made about them. These stories may make you overthink all the times you’ve presumed something about a person.
More info: Reddit
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Woman next to me berates me for being 'so rude and disrespectful'
It’s normal to make assumptions; our brains do it to help make sense of the world around us. There’s an interesting thing that happens to us on an everyday basis involving our unconscious mind. We collect data through our senses and match it against previous experiences to understand what may happen next.
It’s physically impossible to stop and check the accuracy of everything we see, hear, smell, or taste because it would be very time-consuming. So, these brain shortcuts are needed for our sanity. However, the issue with these mental models is that they can hurt other people if we choose to voice our assumptions. Not all of our snap judgments will be accurate 100% of the time, and if we blurt things without evidence, it may not end well.
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As you’ve probably noticed from these posts, many judgments and assumptions about people don’t really reflect who they are. We form these ideas based on our lived experiences, and it colors how we see friends, family, and strangers. Since we’re so busy looking for things that confirm our beliefs about others, we also find it hard to accept if they’re not the way we assumed they were. This shows that we should probably keep our presumptions to ourselves and be willing to change them once we’ve been shown the truth.
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Psychologists say that people love jumping to conclusions. It’s almost a need for us to form assumptions that can help make sense of confusing situations. That’s why people make so many inferences every day without even waiting for any evidence.
One prime example of an unfounded assumption was by Dr. Dionysius Lardner in the 19th century, who believed that passengers would asphyxiate if they sat in high-speed trains. What can one say? After all, we’re human and flawed, and our memories are colored by biased lenses.
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Our tendency to assume and presume can also lead to a whole host of misunderstandings in personal relationships. If you’ve ever read too much into a partner’s mood or expressions only to be proven wrong later, you’ll get exactly what I mean. Sometimes, we put words in people’s mouths and conjure up all sorts of ideas of what they “really” mean. Not only is that unhealthy, and most likely incredibly biased, it only ends up hurting everyone involved. Professionals say that when we avoid making assumptions and focus on open communication, our relationships will improve.
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According to Dr. Sirota, a psychiatrist, we need to “simply pause as we’re jumping to our conclusions and ask ourselves, ‘How do I know this?’” She said that if the answer to that question involves anything other than factual information or evidence, then we might be at risk of making an incorrect assumption.
One of the best ways to work around our tendency to presume is to be brave enough to ask the other person what we want to know. Asking direct questions will help clarify many things and clear the air. Soon, all the festering judgments will go out the window.
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Some of the assumptions that people learned about themselves were certainly heart-breaking. It just goes to show how easy it is to assume something about a person and how long it can stay with them if we voice those thoughts. Hopefully this post helped you rethink the judgments you make.
What are some assumptions people have made about you that you absolutely don’t agree with? Tell us your story in the comments.
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