I’m not really talking about examples here…like riding with your seatbelts is good judgement. I’m talking more about the internal processes that leads a person to think or act a certain way.
I think part of it is the ability to think ahead and imagine the possible consequences of one’s actions.
A lot of it involves long term thinking versus that of the short term.
Quite often, bad judgements are ones made for advantage in the short term that didn’t work in the long term.
On the other hand, good judgements tend to be ones that (as Thudlow noted) work out in the long term.
I agree with Gov Q. It has also been said that good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
I think good judgment also considers the effect of one’s actions upon others, and chooses the best possible course of action under the circumstances, weighing competing alternatives quickly and (more often than not) correctly.
I would argue that it extends beyond merely understanding the likely outcomes of a course of action to considering the universe of possible outcomes and determining whether the downside risk of the worst outcome is acceptable, even if it is highly unlikely. For example, the odds are extremely good that you can drive 30 miles on the freeway at a high rate of speed without wearing your seat belt, and that you will not have an accident and thus will not be horribly mangled and burned beyond recognition. You could probably do it a hundred days in a row, maybe even thousands. One counterinstance, however, and the consequences are unacceptably dire.
Many bad judgments are made by people who’re quite aware of the downside risk, who have correctly assessed the likelihood of those negative outcomes, but who have failed to appreciate that you don’t get to average out the potential outcomes – and the one time in a million that something happens could be the time that affects you, and that if it’s bad enough you won’t get another time at the roulette wheel.
Good judgment doesn’t mean you never make a decision that has a negative result – it means that you limit your exposure to catastrophic risk so that even when things do go wrong, you are not devasted by the results.
This has been alluded to, maybe, but I’d throw in the idea of being able to put things in perspective - to decide which things are important at any given moment, and which things aren’t. A person with judgement can know that it’s important to follow the rules, generally, but it might be more important to break the small rules in a particular instance so that the greater goal can be achieved.
We might need to jaywalk to get to someone who needs immediate help.