Understanding Others, Why Is It So Important?

The human being is the only individual capable of making the effort to understand individuals of the same species. Understanding others involves a task that facilitates socialization processes, improving the survival chances of individuals in different contexts through mutual help.

As social beings, understanding others opens the possibility of visualizing situations from different perspectives. In this sense, it favors the processes involved in empathy and in the value system as a human being. However, the fact that understanding other human beings is an extraordinary ability does not mean that it is a simple goal.

Social behavior in humans

Understanding others is influenced by various factors. Moods, emotions, fatigue, illnesses, etc. they influence the way an individual is willing to do favors or provide help. That is, if a person feels in a good mood, they will be more predisposed to doing favors or understanding others. If, on the other hand, this same person feels irritable, efforts to understand others may be more difficult.

There are times when depending on the expressions, looks and gestures of another person, you can easily recognize their emotional state. However, there are times when handling these non-verbal cues is quite difficult, so that the only solution left is to ask the individual what is happening to him. This second strategy often fails, because sometimes you want to hide more intimate feelings or you want to cover up or lie about these emotional states.

Empathy within the processes of understanding others

Empathy plays an essential role when it comes to understanding the other. Taking control of another person’s experience to know their point of view and the moods generated based on the above opens the doors to understanding.

Understanding others implies the task of experiencing the emotions of others, experiencing at the same time those of oneself, remembering similar experiences that have had to go through and at the same time recognizing the differences between one point of view and another. The key in this process is active listening and not immediate reaction for a correct communication of individual differences.

Why understand others?

Human beings are known to have survived and evolved through the skills of some of their individuals in group living. That is, socialization has facilitated the survival of some through the learning and acquisition of skills taught by others.

Understanding others has been one of the key factors in the development of these basic skills. This provides the knowledge of knowing in what moments it is necessary to interact and put into operation mechanisms linked to safeguarding one’s own life and that of others. What’s more, it is known that being ignored and misunderstood by the rest of a group to which one belongs leads to great emotional and psychological consequences.

Failure to understand others

The tendencies or intentions of people can vary, regardless of the repertoire of behaviors they show to give visibility to a state of mind or an emotion that may be appropriate under the circumstances. For example, if you are at an airport where your gate is one hour from where you are and you need to rush and clear people to get there on time, would that mean that you are impatient and disrespectful?

Certain keys are usually collected in the environment without taking into account other equally important ones. Therefore, understanding others is often not an easy goal to achieve.

On the other hand, the opinion of others about certain circumstances also influences the understanding of certain situations and moods of another person. That is, the reaction of other people can influence the ability to understand an individual.

Therefore, understanding others is one of the essential tasks for the survival of the human being and his community. On the other hand, it is very difficult to transcend the self and put ourselves in the place of the other if we are not skilled at identifying our emotions and the variables that condition them.

In addition, certain opinions and concrete scenarios can dilute objectivity by putting yourself in the shoes of the other individual. This is when empathy can bring out its dark side. Inevitably, as individuals integrated in a community and in a group, value judgments are, at times, practically inevitable.