Page 53 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 18

And finally, a more popular ar�cle:

How I open my pictures of others

"A man sees what is before his eyes, but the
Lord looks at the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7).

I want to put a ques�on mark behind all the
images I have of other people, no ma�er who
the other person is, how long and how well I
have known him or her.
The other person is different from what I think.
In contrast: Openness to others being different
from what I have thought so far brings hope
into our rela�onships. I want to open up my
images of others.

Various results of psychological research into
the percep�on of persons show that our Werner May (Germany)
images of each other are formed very quickly was the senior chairman of the IG-
and NIS Ins�tute for Chris�an Psycho-
• consciously and unconsciously influence the logy in Kitzingen for more than 25
way we treat each other, years (www.ignis.de). As a teacher
• promote or disrupt the building of trust and his main interest was in basic ques-
• define a wide or narrow developmental �ons of Chris�an Psychology and in
space for the rela�onship.
counseling of foster families. He
also helped to build up the Ins�tu-
We usually do not wait un�l we have more ex- te for Chris�an Psychology, Educa-
tensive informa�on about a person, but we �on and Therapy in Switzerland
form an overall impression as soon as we have (www.icp.ch). Now he is the chair-
received a few pieces of informa�on, whatever man of the European Movement
these may be. This is called a first impression.
for Chris�an Anthropology, Psycho-
logy and Therapy (www.emcap-
This first impression has two characteris�cs: it p.eu) and publishes the free e-jour-
is rela�vely stable in rela�on to further infor- nal Chris�an Psychology Around
ma�on and it influences me in my behaviour to- The World (h�ps://emcapp.ignis
wards this person (and thus in turn influences .de). Since 2016 he has also publis-
this person towards my impression).
hed another e-magazine (www.ge-
haltvoll-magazin.de) to encourage
When construc�ng images about other people, people that they can live their eve-
errors occur that are called errors of judge- ryday life in rela�onship with God
ment. and others as an extraordinary life.
Because we o�en make these errors when jud- Werner has been married to Agnes
ging others, our percep�on of others depends for more than 45 years. They live in
more on the person making the judgement Würzburg, Germany, and have six
(and what is going on inside them) than on the adult children.
individual characteris�cs of the person being
observed.

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