this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
39 points (81.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43908 readers
1394 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because you have a subconscious preconception about beards.
It is true that beards can hide expressions, making it harder to read someone, which can reduce "trust". But that's only part of it. Your idea that it makes them look crazy is all about your ideas of things.
You're probably basing it on the unkempt nature of people that aren't able to function well. The homeless, people that are "crazy" or otherwise behave unusually, that kind of thing. You've developed a connection between two things that aren't really connected. An unkempt beard only means that the beard isn't being grown to be socially conforming. The fact that people that are unable to socially conform rather than choosing not to tend to be less capable of maintaining a beard to social standards is a separate issue.
Don't get me wrong, it's a fairly common thing to have that preconception. I have a big ol beard and sometimes catch myself spending extra time evaluating the threat level of someone that's ragged.
Don't worry about it. We all have preconceptions, it's how human's minds work. Just keep yourself aware that you can't reliably trust preconceptions.