Challenge your preconceptions

Preconceptions, we all have them. Whether they are seemingly innocuous, “Oh you work in IT, can you fix my printer?”, or extremely negative judgements that affect how we interact with others, “Oh you’re an atheist, that means you must have questionable morals”; they exist within all of us.
It is a very natural thing for humans to do, classify things in our world so we can analyse their potential threat or benefit to us. It is something we have evolved to do, and to do very well. It is a skill that our ancestors used to keep them alive – that sound is likely to be a cheetah that can kill you, that person by the river is from an enemy tribe so may hurt you, that tree has leaves so there must be water nearby, etc.
But we can get stuck in our preconceptions, judging people through stereotypes that are only one potential facet of that person. They are often very simplistic, and regularly untrue. And yet they will alter the way we interact with people, both in good and bad ways.
Challenging our preconceptions is something that we should all take the time to do. Not only does the process help us understand how much we actually do this and the effect it is having on our interactions, but importantly it helps us see some of the preconceptions that we might not even be aware of.
The real aim of challenging your preconceptions is that you might learn more about a stereotype that you use, and hopefully stop judging people you think fit into that stereotype in such a limited way.
What does that all mean? It means rejecting the single story that the media might be telling you about asylum seekers, young people, old people, people of different faiths, people from different cultures, climate change, the occupy movement, people on welfare, and a myriad of other stories. It means looking deeper, reading more, listening to a different source of information or even talking to someone from the group that you have preconceptions about.
Challenge your preconceptions is a concept, it is a thought, that if everyone in the world focused on understanding the preconceptions they have, and made an effort to challenge just one of those preconceptions; it could be a step towards making the world a more accepting and equitable place to live.
Join with us in June 2012 to understand your preconceptions – the stereotypes that you judge others by – and select one to challenge. Take a small step to developing a better understanding of yourself and the people around you.

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