Is it best to judge a person by the way he speaks or by the way he silences?

Answer 1

If by "judging" you mean getting to know the true individual behind the facade and making contact with his/her inner soul/personality, then take this little tip from an avid Poker player - you can NOT go by the words, the silences, or the occasional actions and reactions of the person. ... Instead, you must develop an integrated (intuitive and working) “feel” for the overall patterns, visions and predictability levels of the person's "interest - and - insecurity - based" behavior. Correlating their eye movements and body twitches with their complex and verifiable mosaic of sincerity-demeanor is usually a good place to start in a REAL life contact situation, but it goes way beyond that, of course, before you can truly acquire a reliable feel for the person. A word of caution (again from a Poker milieu point of view): Make sure you are not being deliberately setup to pick up on deceiving and fabricated clues! Also make sure to always give a person a second chance. In other words, don't rush into any precipitated judgments; otherwise you might actually shortchange yourself out of a potentially wonderful friendship. Likewise, it pays NOT to be too aggressively playful in testing the loyalty of potential friends - they may take it as an offensive gesture of pathologic mistrust.

With a virtual maze (e.g. the Y!A and/or the online poker games environments), on the other hand, keep in mind the rules of the game become considerably more sophisticated, requiring an additional arsenal of exceptionally advanced deciphering strategies.

Finally, and when it comes to love and romantic relationships all bets are usually off due to the underlying catch 22 situations. In other words, you can do all the “judging” and “personality decoding” that you want, but if you don’t, or cannot and some point, intrinsically trust the other person unconditionally; you are essentially wasting your time. Love is no poker game – if you cannot eventually trust your partner enough to give him/her your heart you’ll be a loser at the end of the day, just the same – no matter how many times you choose to hold ‘em, fold ‘em, or even walk away.

Answer 2

That is actually a very good question. I think one must judge by both to some extent, but the person who can be silent, knows how to be silent, and who, in that silence, really listens, I think that is the most important factor for judging the quality of a person.

Answer 3

You should look at all sides of the person. Just because he is not a good listener you are not going to stop talking to him and just because he doesn't know what to say you are going to stop talking to him either. Look at both but also look at his actions. Words are easy to say but actions are not that easy to do. Whatever you do never judge anyone by the way they look that is the least important thing in life.

Answer 4

Well, I have a MS in Psychology so both ways can be given for evaluation. However, we are not here to judge a person, just his behavior.

Answer 5

Actions speak louder than words. As Ben Franklin once said: "Well Done Is Better Than Well Said" ...

Answer 6

Judge him by both but NEVER judge a book by its cover.

Answer 7

You can always judge a book by it's cover.

Answer 8

Definitely silences ... we all love a good listener!

Answer 9

I think you'll need to stir a bit more into your equation before any judgment will be at all valid. Use more factors than just these two.

Answer 10

you afraid that he might judge you, or has some dirt on you,
you will never know