1 There are two different ways people judge you. Sometimes judging you correctly is the end goal. But there's a second much more common type of judgment where it isn't. We tend to regard all judgments of us as the first type. We'd probably be happier if we realized which are and which aren't.
2 The first type of judgment, the type where judging you is the end goal, includes court cases, grades in classes, and most competitions. Such judgments can of course be mistaken, but because the goal is to judge you correctly, there's usually some kind of appeals process. If you feel you've been misjudged, you can protest that you've been treated unfairly.
3 Nearly all the judgments made on children are of this type, so we get into the habit early in life of thinking that all judgments are.
4 But in fact there is a second much larger class of judgments where judging you is only a means to something else. These include college admissions, hiring and investment decisions, and of course the judgments made in dating. This kind of judgment is not really about you.
5 Put yourself in the position of someone selecting players for a national team. Suppose for the sake of simplicity that this is a game with no positions, and that you have to select 20 players. There will be a few stars who clearly should make the team, and many players who clearly shouldn't. The only place your judgment makes a difference is in the borderline cases. Suppose you screw up and underestimate the 20th best player, causing him not to make the team, and his place to be taken by the 21st best. You've still picked a good team. If the players have the usual distribution of ability, the 21st best player will be only slightly worse than the 20th best. Probably the difference between them will be less than the measurement error.
6 The 20th best player may feel he has been misjudged. But your goal here wasn't to provide a service estimating people's ability. It was to pick a team, and if the difference between the 20th and 21st best players is less than the measurement error, you've still done that optimally.
7 It's a false analogy even to use the word unfair to describe this kind of misjudgment. It's not aimed at producing a correct estimate of any given individual, but at selecting a reasonably optimal set.
8 One thing that leads us astray here is that the selector seems to be in a position of power. That makes him seem like a judge. If you regard someone judging you as a customer instead of a judge, the expectation of fairness goes away. The author of a good novel wouldn't complain that readers were unfair for preferring a potboiler with a racy cover. Stupid, perhaps, but not unfair. 9 Our early training and our self-centeredness combine to make us believe that every judgment of us is about us. In fact most aren't. This is a rare case where being less self-centered will make people more confident. Once you realize how little most people judging you care about judging you accurately—once you realize that because of the normal distribution of most applicant pools, it matters least to judge accurately in precisely the cases where judgment has the most effect—you won't take rejection so personally.
10 And curiously enough, taking rejection less personally may help you to get rejected less often. If you think someone judging you will work hard to judge you correctly, you can afford to be passive. But the more you realize that most judgments are greatly influenced by random, extraneous factors—that most people judging you are more like a fickle novel buyer than a wise and perceptive magistrate—the more you realize you can do things to influence the outcome. 11 One good place to apply this principle is in college applications. Most high school students applying to college do it with the usual child's mix of inferiority and self-centeredness: inferiority in that they assume that admissions committees must be all-seeing; self-centeredness in that they assume admissions committees care enough about them to dig down into their application and figure out whether they're good or not. These combine to make applicants passive in applying and hurt when they're rejected. If college applicants realized how quick and impersonal most selection processes are, they'd make more effort to sell themselves, and take the outcome less personally.
两种判断
判断一个人有两种不同的方式，有时判断的最终目的是正确地判断一个人，不过另外一种则不是如此，并且这种判断要常见得多。我们往往认为所有的判断都属于第一种。如果能意识到哪些是第一种而哪些不是的话，我们也许会更幸福。
第一种判断，即把正确地判断一个人作为最终目的的判断，包括法院判决、考试成绩及大部分比赛。这些判断当然可能会有误判，但因为其最终目的是正确地判断一个人，通常会有某种类似于上诉的程序。如果你觉得别人没有正确评价你，你可以表示反对， 说你受到了不公平的待遇。
几乎所有对孩子的判断都属于第一类，所以在小时候我们就养成了这种习惯，认为所有的判断都是这样。
但实际上还有更广泛地存在着的第二类判断，在这种判断中，对你作出判断只是做另一件事的手段。这包括大学招生、聘用及作投资决定，当然也包括在约会时作出的判断。这种判断并不是真正意义上对你作出的评价。
假设你要为国家队挑选运动员。简单起见，假设这是一个没有位置要求的运动，并且你需要挑选二十个运动员。有一些明星运动员肯定要在队里，还有许多肯定不能入选。只有那些难作取舍的情况会让你的判断产生差别。即使你搞砸了，低估了排在第二十名的运动员，使他落选了，他的位置被排在第二十一名的运动员所代替，你还是组建了一支好的队伍。如果运动员之间的能力分配正常，第二十一名运动员只会比第二十名略微逊色，或者他们之间的差距比测量误差还要小。
那位排在第二十名的运动员可能会觉得自己被错误地判断了。但是在此你的目的不是为人们提供能力评估服务，而是组建一支队伍，如果排名第二十位的与排名第二十一位的运动员之间的差距比测量误差还小，你还是作了最佳选择。
用“不公平”来形容这种“不正确的判断”是一种错误的类比。因为在此目的不是为了对某个特定的个体作出正确的评估，而是选择合理的最佳组合。
在此，会误导我们的一点是选择者看起来有点权力。这点权力会让人们认为他像个法官。如果你把对你作出判断的人看成是一个顾客而不是一个法官，那么你就没有了对公平性的期望。一部好小说的作者不会抱怨读者更喜欢金玉其外败絮其中的作品，说他们这样做不公平。也许会觉得他们愚蠢，但并没有不公平。
我们早年所受的训练，加上我们总是以自我为中心，使我们认为对我们所作的每个
判断都是关于我们本身的判断。但事实上大部分并非如此。这是一个少见的例子，说明不那么以自我为中心会使人更自信。一旦你意识到人们在判断你的时候多么不在意对你的判断是否精确——由于大部分申请人的正态分布，在判断会产生最主要的影响的情况下，最无关紧要的往往是判断是否精确，一旦你意识到这一点你就不会把拒绝看成是针对你个人了。
令人惊奇的是，把被拒绝看得不那么针对个人，能帮助你更少地遭到拒绝。如果你认为别人在对你作出判断时会努力做到判断正确，你能做的就是被动地接受。你越了解大部分的判断受随意性及不相关的因素影响很大，大部分人在对你作出判断时更像一个善变的小说购买者而不是一个理智而洞察一切的法官，你就越能认识到你能做一些事去影响最终结果。
这个理论最适用于大学申请。大部分高中生申请大学时带着不成熟的自卑和以自我为中心：自卑体现在他们认为招生委员会肯定是明察秋毫的；以自我为中心是他们认为招生委员会对他们非常重视，所以会认真研究他们的申请并权衡他们是否优秀。这些因素相结合就导致申请人在申请时很被动，并且在被拒绝时感到受伤。如果大学申请人意识到大部分选择过程是多么迅速、多么不考虑个体需求，他们就会更努力地推销自己，并能更加坦然地对待录取结果。
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