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unspeakablehorrorI think one of the biggest problems in character judgment is what I call the 'but they were always nice to me' fallacy. It's the fallacy that because someone was always good to you or generally pleasant or decent in the contexts in which you dealt with them, that they are that way to everyone else or in all other contexts.
There are people I know who are unpleasant with me who might be otherwise decent people, or who might be absolutely delightful with others. There are people who have been perfectly nice to me, who I know due to them mentioning details about their past or catching hints of it in casual remarks of theirs are deeply unpleasant to others, or even have committed full-scale atrocities on others. You can't truly understand the scope of a person simply by how they behave to you or around you. People don't treat everyone they meet with the same level of regard or fairness and they don't in general present the same face to everyone.
There are many people in the world who are Jekyll to some and Hyde to the rest. Alternately, there are people who may be awful to you for reasons that would be understandable to you if you had the distance to be less affected by their actions and the perspective to understand their reasons.
There are people I know who are unpleasant with me who might be otherwise decent people, or who might be absolutely delightful with others. There are people who have been perfectly nice to me, who I know due to them mentioning details about their past or catching hints of it in casual remarks of theirs are deeply unpleasant to others, or even have committed full-scale atrocities on others. You can't truly understand the scope of a person simply by how they behave to you or around you. People don't treat everyone they meet with the same level of regard or fairness and they don't in general present the same face to everyone.
There are many people in the world who are Jekyll to some and Hyde to the rest. Alternately, there are people who may be awful to you for reasons that would be understandable to you if you had the distance to be less affected by their actions and the perspective to understand their reasons.