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It has long been known that we as humans are the victims of our own emotions long before we were able to think. Prejudice as it sounds, comes from the word, “pre-judge” which can be fairly understood as prior conviction made on something before facts. Prejudice has also been associated with words such as “intolerant” and “bigoted” which are usually used in the religious and racial manner. Most of the times, we are able to see clearly whenever someone is perceived prejudice towards religion, race or gender. An employer who was caught being prejudiced in hiring staff could be subjected to serious punishment in most companies and countries. It’s easier to catch someone who demonstrates strong prejudice towards certain religion, race, gender or politics, but it’s not that easy to catch ourselves being prejudiced in most of other areas in our lives. How so?

How often have we given up something on the thought that we were never good enough at it? How many of us have decided that it’s impossible for them to lose weight because they are genetically fat? How often have we declined friendship from people whom we have decided “unfit” to be be our friends? We may not notice that we are being prejudice to ourselves whenever we quit at something after the first attempt of trying something and we failed, and we told ourselves, “I’d never be able to do this. I have never stood before audience before to give presentations. I’ve failed now and it’s proven that I’m terrible at it”. That’s a prejudice thought! Or whenever there was one bad woman driver we met on the road, we would shake our heads and sigh, “Women drivers!”. Or whenever a fat and unattractive person steps up to stage and speak, we’d say, “Gosh, I think I’m gonna fall asleep”. Sometimes, prejudice do not come out right and only show itself in stressful situations. In extreme example, couples argue and the husband might say something like, “You are a bitch just like your mother” and the wife would reply with something like, “You have failed at 3 jobs. You are such a loser”.

There was so much of emotions rather than facts in such remarks. That’s what a prejudiced mind would do - setting up a conviction or a belief on something before testing it. As much as we do not favor prejudiced mind, many can’t avoid them. The reasons could be endless. But, if I may point out some here, these could be the reasons:

1. Ignorance = Yeap. It’s difficult to know that you are wrong if you have been doing the same thing for many years. If you ask those who regularly purchase high-priced branded items, they’d tell you that these higher quality stuff are of better quality as compared to cheaper stuff. Well, I won’t say that they are entirely wrong. They could be right, but we need to test that statement. Is it really true that all luxurious items are of better quality than cheaper brands? Being a consumer myself, I have my own experience of shopping. I typically find expensive shoes will last me longer than cheaper shoes, plus they are more comfortable, even they may not as pretty as cheaper shoes. (Note: I am wearing Clarks and SnowFly now and in the past I’ve tried Bonia, Carlo Rino, Vincci and several other brands). But, this fact doesn’t hold true for all products. A makeup fan myself, I used to wear a lot of Mac products. Although certain product lines like their face powder is truly awesome, I can also find comparatively good and cheaper lipstick from Body Shop or Loreal. Having said that, I’ll go all out and defend that all expensive stuff are better than cheaper stuff, but I’d explain what I’ve learned based on my experiences. And I’m also open to new information. If someone comes to me and tell me that she finds Bonia shoes are better than Clarks, I will accept that because that’s her experience.
2. Pride / Stubbornness = I know both words mean differently but I use them alltogether here because of their strong correlations. People can remain being prejudiced as long as they are not willing to swallow their pride and admit that their behavior is wrong and unacceptable. I believe natural human conscience always tell us what’s good and what’s bad. History has born heroes like Robin Hood who robbed from the rich and gave the gains away to the poor. His act was wrong but his intention was good. World magnates and billionaires like Donald Trump and Bill Gates are known for their generosity. But, conscience is one thing, either we listen or ignore it is another. In marriage where both partners are working, a husband who expects the wife to carry out all the houseworks while he conveniently slump on couch, exercising fingers over remote control was acting out of prejudice which could be traced back to pride or stubbornness.
3. It’s easier to be prejudice than not =

I love observing people. Sometimes I did it rather too obvious that my Kind-Hearted Friend would jostle my elbow, shake his head several times and slowly whisper, “i can’t believe it”. He always says that the way I observe people looks like as though I would have approached them any minute and ask, “I have some questions about you. Would you entertain me?”. Well, so far nobody has ever sued me for observing them, so I don’t see any reason to stop doing that. Plus, it’s fun. Anyway, I think it has been a significant improvement in my observation manners. I remember during my university days where my friends and me would observed any couples who ill-fatedly have came into our observation area, and we started making our due diligence remarks of what we saw. The remarks could be as general as, “How could this great-looking guy go out with this plain-looking girl?”, to as specific as, “Given scale 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest, how would you rate this guy?”. It was really fun to do that since we could always relate to ourselves whatever we commented about the couples. One of the friends, H would say that she would give the guy 7 and I would disagree. She would later rationalized that she gave the guy 7 because she thought the guy had shown some charisma and was dark-skinned. And I would have told her that she couldn’t judge charisma as part of the package since the judgment was supposed only be made on physical appearances only.

That was then. Nowadays, I still do observe people but most of the time, I was alone while doing that. It could be anywhere. In the airport while waiting for my flights, or in the train going to / coming back from work, or while doing my window shopping in stores. And unlike the old days, I try not to pass my judgment anymore. Okay, I admit that sometimes I can’t avoid doing that, especially if the subject of my observation looked like totally out of character or seemed too weirdo. But at least, this time I keep the remarks to myself without sharing it with anyone. But, of all the subjects, nothing interests me more that observing couples.

I remember during my childhood days, I was so absorbed in the Hollywood and Bollywood love stories that I used to believe that couples should be both equally good-looking and attractive. The man should be charming enough that the woman finds it irresistible to love him despite his crazy antics. He should be strong enough to protect her from enemies - even that may mean he would have to fight against 20 tough men alone (you’d be able to see that in any Bollywood movies) or follow the Malay’s proverb, “swim across the ocean of fire for her?”. And he should be sensitive enough to understand what she wants without asking too much (I suppose many men would give up on this). And he should also be rich enough to afford anything she wants. And the woman would be the subject of envy of all the women who sees her and subject of desire of other men. For this beautiful woman, the man she’s with will fight against everything to be with her.

Perhaps my imagination is a bit far-stretched from reality. Growing up, I’ve realized that tall, fair-skinned and good-looking people only makes a small percentage of the whole world population. In fact, I once read that only 8% of women are born with model-like body - tall, lanky and very slim. Should I still be holding on to that limited belief, then less than 8% of the world population will never get married (chances are not all models want to get married), including me (since I suppose I don’t look like a model). Nowadays, as I observe all types of couples around me, I’ve realized how limited my thinking was. Those women with their male companions, they are every sort of people. Short and tall, fair and dark, fat and skinny; they have someone in their lives who may love them dearly either we perceive them beautiful or not.

I suppose there will always be couples around us that many will raise eyebrows whenever we see them. Remarks such as “The woman’s too young for the man”, “the man is better looking that her”, “he’s too tall for her” are still abound and we can’t hardly erase from people’s minds. Luckily, I was over my limited belief and thinking of relationships that this kind of sight, though it may still catch my eyes, but I am no longer perplexed by it. I believe that:

1. Attractiveness goes beyond looks and someone that looks dull in the eyes of some people could be perceived as attractive if she/he carries attractive characters.
2. There is no one single definition of beautiful. We don’t need to be tall, slim and fair-skinned to look beautiful. If you need affirmation, start looking at black models and exotic beauties from Asian counties.
3. Anyone can look beautiful as long as they take good care of themselves. Having said that, everyone is responsible to ensure they get good rest, exercise and eat healthily since these habits would radiate health and vitality from inside out.
4. If you have someone who loves you and thinks that you are beautiful, then why would you need a second opinion? You can’t make the whole world agrees with you.

And I think the next time I see couples that catch my eyes, I guess I just gonna say, “May God bless you.”

Image courtesy of: http://flickr.com/photos/chun/13343457/

If you are a lecturer or in any kind of profession which gives presentations to people, you’d usually familiar with evaluation forms which  rate your performance and delivery of your speeches or presentations. And if you receive a bad rating on your evaluation forms by your audiences, it may means that you might need to lose some weight, change your dressing or wear better make up; rather than improving your presentation skills. You may think that I’m out of my mind, but Daniel Hamermesh, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, and Amy Parker, one of his students found that students tend to give higher rating to good-looking professors as compared to their less comely colleagues.

“In their study, Mr. Hamermesh and Ms. Parker asked students to look at photographs of 94 professors and rate their beauty. Then they compared those ratings to the average student evaluation scores for the courses taught by those professors. The two found that the professors who had been rated among the most beautiful scored a point higher than those rated least beautiful (that’s a substantial difference, since student evaluations don’t generally vary by much). ”

Teaching in universities is supposed to be a highly academic and intellectual career someone could embarks in. And to gauge someone’s competencies in teaching through their physical appearance is totally unfathomable. While academic achievement is still made possible through hard work, not so many of us are blessed to be a rocket scientist with a part-time modeling job. And it’s unimaginable to tell a professor that he does a lousy job at teaching just because the students do not think that he would make the cover of any male magazines. We do not know how much this finding will represent the rest of other students and audiences in the auditorium halls, but we fear that students would spend more time checking out their lecturers in their class rather than paying attention to what is being taught.

 Good looks = Higher pay?

However, the next question that we may want to ask ourselves is how far this would go? Now that we’ve learned that a Julia Roberts-look alike professor stands a better chance of getting higher rating in her evaluation, would she also be more considered for higher promotion and pay in the university? We do not know whether students’ evaluations are taken for consideration for lecturers’ progression in their careers, but it’s essential that when universities start doing that, they better be really careful about it. We always know that beauty trumps brains in many quarters, but universities should be spared from this shallowness.

Hamermesh has gone a step further with another research where he teamed up with Jeff Biddle, an economist at Michigan State University to study the linkage between looks and salaries in companies.  The researchers say the penalty for plainness is 5% to 10% lower pay in all occupations, or slightly larger than the premium for good looks.

Are we the masters or slaves of our own minds?

What do all these mean? Are we really prejudiced individuals with such narrow filters in our minds to assess people? Are these filters created at birth or developed within the cultures and environment we live in? Are we in control of these filters  or do they control us? Malcolm Gladwell has attempted to give us a glimpse of what is behind our minds in his infamous book ”Blink“. It’s a story about that little dark room in our brains that gives us split-second thought or impression of how we perceive things. So intricate it is that most of us are not able to fathom or verbally describe what and how it’s like. Within that split seconds, we decide to date a stranger, refuse a dinner invitation, hire a job applicant, get upset with our partner and etc.