Judge Not: How Invisible Situations Shape Our Lives

Judge Not: How Invisible Situations Shape Our Lives by David, J. Y. Combs, PhD explores the vast, and often invisible, power that situations have in shaping our lives. Human beings tend to assume that the behavior we observe in other people is a window into who they are. So, when we see a person engage in a good behavior, we tend to think that they are a good person. If we see a bad behavior... we assume the person is bad, flawed, or defective.

But what if we’re wrong? What if the behaviors we observe are often driven not by some core element of a person but, rather, by the invisible situations and context a person exists within?

Research tells us that human behavior is shaped by context and situation far more than we assume. As a result, our judgments are commonly misguided and incomplete (at best) and catastrophically wrong (at worst). In many cases, we try to engage a person to fix their behavior based on our flawed or incomplete understanding of what’s actually causing their actions... with a potential for devastating results.

Judge Not explores these fundamental human challenges—and offers a path to a better way.