The other day, my father asked me the difference between making judgments and being a judgmental person. Given how I sometimes experience my father, it was a potentially loaded question. Although he has many wonderful qualities and we are close, it certainly is the case that I (and several others) occasionally experience him as being overly judgmental.
In asking me the question, it was clear that he wanted to make the point that everyone makes judgments all the time. And, if that is the case, why are only certain people accused of being judgmental? Or, to put it slightly differently, is it fair to say that I am being judgmental if I accuse my father of being judgmental?
Carl Rogers had much to say about problems associated with being judgmental. The ideal of a nonjudgmental attitude was central to his client-centered humanistic approach to psychotherapy. (See Mayer's blogs on this). Rogers argued that people had a positive growth force that would be stunted from reaching its potential in the context of judgmental others. Because of this, Rogers maintained that successful therapy required the therapist to possess a nonjudgmental, positive regard for clients, which he described as the following:
. experiencing a warm acceptance of each aspect of the client's experience as being a part of that client. It means that there are no conditions of acceptance, no feeling of "I like you only if you are thus and so." It means a "prizing" of the person, as Dewey has used that term. It is at the opposite pole from a selective evaluating attitude -- "You are bad in these ways, good in those."
With this frame in mind, let’s say your 15-year-old client (or daughter) has just let you know that last night at a party, she lost her virginity via having casual, unprotected sex with a senior she just met. Although I would clearly have a more charged reaction if it were my daughter, even if I were working with a client, I certainly would have concerns that reflected my values and opinions about the wisdom of this act.
This brings us back to my father’s basic point, which is that we are constantly viewing others’ actions through evaluative lenses. And shouldn’t we be doing so? I certainly judge the actions of my kids, students, wife, etc. It would be impossible not to.
Even in the therapy room, I will be nodding and encouraging of my clients when they voice certain things I see as adaptive (e.g., “It was pretty impressive that you did that," “That took a lot of courage to say,” “I think you are getting better with managing that”), and question other acts that I see as maladaptive (e.g., “I wonder if that was the best approach,” “It seems your impulsivity might have got the best of you," “Do you think a part of you might regret that later?”).
Indeed, most would argue that even the great Carl Rogers was constantly making statements that reflected his judgments about the way people ought to be (see here for an interesting clip involving Rogers). So that brings us back to the original question: What is the difference between making judgments and being judgmental?
If you look up the word judgmental in the dictionary, there are generally two meanings, which help us sort out the issues. One has to do with making judgments; so, yes, at a basic semantic level, making judgments is being judgmental.
The other meaning of judgmental has to do with being overly critical in an unhelpful way, and it is this separate meaning that allows us to get to the heart of the issue. It is when we make judgments in ways that have harmful or negative consequences that we are being judgmental in ways that are best to avoid. How do we know how to make constructive as opposed to problematic judgments? This is a very complicated question, but below are eight key dynamics that are useful to keep in mind when judging others.
1. The empathy dynamic. When evaluating someone else’s actions or personality, it is crucial that you understand where they are coming from; their perspective, history, and the experiences that went into the current situation. In the above example of the 15-year-old, at some point, it would be crucial to be very clear about her narrative and understand what she was thinking and feeling when she made that decision.