Judgment, Prejudice and Profiling

I saw this gem of a program on GSN tonight. It is a game where a panel of five people view clips of 5 contestants who are all trying to get the panel to award them $25,000.00. Each round of the game the panel learns something new about the contestants and after each round the panel must decide one contestant to eliminate -- often with very little information.

The overall premise is to examine how people make decisions and based on what potential prejudices. I watched the entire 90 minute episode wanting to know more about the panelists, since I am curious how they came up with their, more often than not, completely ridiculous conclusions about these people. It also made me start to think about my own profiling of people and wonder how much of it is based on prejudice and judgmental arising out of my own baggage.

I have always been somewhat accurate at profiling people based on only knowing very little about them. I usually attribute it to understanding the core human patterns of behavior from my literature and sociology study. But now it makes me wonder if there is something more to it.

I have a belief in the metaphysical, but never believed I was specially attuned to it. But after watching this show, I wonder if I do have an ability that I just need to develop more or is this the first time in a long time I have been faced with the level of stupidity that exists out there. In any case, I think the bottom like is, I need a vacation.