Avoiding First Impressions--Giving Another Person the Benefit of the Doubt

I have often been reminded of a life-long lesson: we must beware of leaping to a judgment of another person based on initial, superficial impressions.

Most recently I was reminded of this by an eloquent perspective offered in one of the finest novels I have ever read: "A Gentleman in Moscow" written by Amor Towles.

Here it is:

In describing how his understanding of the actress, Anna Urbanova, changed as he, the Count Alexander Rostov came to understand her story, Towles writes: 

 “The Count had to acknowledge once again the virtues of withholding judgment.  After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel?  For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone?  Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli.  By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we’ve engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

What an eloquent, poetic, literary enunciation of why we must avoid reaching premature judgements on people and avoid falling prey to implicit bias.