The First Thirty Seconds: The Art of Judging Character in Wartime
By Matthew Parish
Saturday 31 October 2026
In ordinary civilian life, we are encouraged not to judge people too quickly. We are told that first impressions can be misleading, that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt and that a person’s character is something to be understood gradually through experience. These are admirable principles, supported by generations of moral philosophy and social convention. They are also principles that may get you killed in a war zone.
War changes the relationship between time, trust and personal judgment. In peaceful societies, we enjoy the luxury of allowing relationships to develop. We can meet somebody repeatedly, observe their behaviour in different circumstances, listen to the opinions of mutual acquaintances and gradually determine whether they are honest, reliable, dangerous, foolish or kind. In wartime, particularly in a country such as Ukraine where the boundary between civilian and military life has become increasingly indistinct, we may have no such opportunity.
We may have thirty seconds to decide whether to enter a vehicle with a stranger, accept an invitation to an unfamiliar location, disclose personal information or entrust somebody with knowledge that could endanger other people. The capacity to make rapid judgments about human character therefore becomes something more than a social skill. It becomes an instrument of survival.
This does not mean that our instincts are infallible. Quite the contrary: the most important aspect of learning to judge character quickly is understanding how often our judgments may be wrong. Nevertheless, war imposes a terrible discipline upon us. We must make decisions before we possess all the information we would ideally like to have, and sometimes the consequences of making the wrong decision are irreversible.
The luxury of civilian hesitation
Modern civilian society is constructed around institutions designed to reduce our dependence upon personal judgment. We trust banks because they are regulated. We trust hotels because they have reputations to maintain. We trust taxi drivers because their vehicles are registered, their journeys may be recorded and there are procedures for making complaints. We trust professional colleagues because their qualifications, employment histories and references can ordinarily be checked.
None of these arrangements is perfect, but together they create an environment in which we can afford to make mistakes about other people. If a business acquaintance turns out to be dishonest, we may lose money. If a supposed friend proves unreliable, we may suffer disappointment. If somebody behaves rudely or aggressively, we can usually withdraw from the relationship without catastrophic consequences.
War undermines these assumptions. Institutions may continue to function, as indeed many Ukrainian institutions have done with extraordinary resilience, but the circumstances in which we rely upon them become unpredictable. Transport may be improvised, communications may fail, official authority may be difficult to verify and ordinary commercial transactions may become entangled with military necessity.
The stranger offering you assistance may be a courageous volunteer, a dishonest opportunist, a frightened civilian seeking companionship or somebody with altogether more sinister intentions. The difficulty is that all four may initially behave in much the same way. In peaceful society, the prudent response is often to postpone judgment, whereas in wartime postponement may itself constitute a decision carrying considerable risk.
Human intuition as an instrument of survival
Human beings possess a remarkable capacity to make rapid assessments of one another. We notice inconsistencies between words and actions, expressions that do not quite correspond with spoken assurances, disproportionate emotional reactions and subtle departures from ordinary patterns of behaviour. Much of this process takes place beneath conscious reflection. We sometimes describe it as intuition, although this term conceals an extraordinarily complex set of psychological processes.
Our brains are constantly comparing present experiences with accumulated memories. We recognise patterns of sincerity, evasiveness, aggression, generosity and deception without necessarily being able to explain precisely how we have reached our conclusions. An experienced journalist, soldier, humanitarian worker or diplomat may develop particularly acute capacities of this kind because repeated exposure to unfamiliar people provides opportunities to refine them.
However, such intuition is not a supernatural faculty for detecting dishonesty. A nervous person may appear evasive because they are frightened. An exhausted soldier may appear aggressive because he has not slept properly for days. A traumatised civilian may contradict herself because traumatic memories are often fragmentary, while a practised liar may appear extraordinarily calm and convincing.
The important distinction is between recognising a potential warning sign and drawing a definitive conclusion about another person’s character. War requires the first of these capacities to be developed to an unusually high degree, while the second must remain subject to constant intellectual discipline. An intuition should therefore often be treated as a reason to take precautions, not as proof of wrongdoing.
The asymmetry of mistakes
One of the most profound differences between personal judgment in wartime and ordinary civilian life lies in the unequal consequences of mistakes. In peaceful society, being excessively suspicious may be more damaging than being excessively trusting. It can destroy friendships, undermine professional relationships and leave a person socially isolated. We therefore cultivate tolerance, patience and the willingness to give others second chances.
In a war zone, however, the consequences of misplaced trust can be disproportionately severe. A journalist who discloses the whereabouts of soldiers to an unverified acquaintance may endanger their lives. A volunteer who entrusts humanitarian supplies to an unreliable intermediary may deprive vulnerable people of essential assistance. A civilian who accepts transport from somebody whose intentions are unclear may place themselves in circumstances from which escape becomes difficult.
These possibilities alter the rational calculation. The cost of declining an invitation from a perfectly innocent stranger may be a missed friendship or an awkward conversation. The cost of accepting an invitation from the wrong person may be much greater, and there may be no opportunity afterwards to correct the mistake.
Yet the reverse danger is equally real. A soldier who reflexively distrusts everyone outside his immediate unit may cut himself off from essential civilian assistance. A humanitarian worker who refuses to cooperate with unfamiliar local volunteers may fail to deliver aid. A journalist who suspects every evasive answer of concealing malicious intent may entirely misunderstand the culture of fear that war creates.
The art of wartime judgment therefore consists not in becoming suspicious of everybody but in learning how to distribute trust intelligently. One may be courteous without being credulous, generous without being reckless and compassionate without surrendering one’s personal security. These distinctions are difficult to maintain, particularly under conditions of exhaustion and psychological stress, but they are indispensable.
The peculiar morality of the war zone
War creates an environment in which conventional indicators of respectability become less reliable. A person dressed in military clothing may be an authentic serviceman, a veteran no longer serving, a volunteer, an enthusiastic civilian or somebody deliberately cultivating a misleading impression of authority. Equally, a dishevelled individual with few possessions may have performed acts of extraordinary courage.
Social class, education, appearance and professional status become remarkably poor substitutes for an assessment of character. A person with impressive qualifications may prove useless in an emergency, while somebody who has received little formal education may possess exceptional practical intelligence and moral courage. War rearranges social hierarchies because the qualities it rewards are often different from those rewarded in comfortable civilian society.
Indeed, war has a way of revealing human qualities that peaceful society often conceals. The individual who appears unremarkable in a café may turn out to be the person who risks his life repeatedly to evacuate wounded soldiers. A quiet woman who runs a modest charitable organisation may demonstrate greater administrative ability and personal fortitude than the executives of substantial commercial enterprises.
Conversely, somebody who impresses others through wealth, confident conversation or cultivated social connections may prove fundamentally unreliable when circumstances become dangerous. War strips away many of the artificial hierarchies through which we ordinarily assess one another and forces us to ask more fundamental questions. Does this person keep their promises? Do they take responsibility for their actions? Do they remain calm under pressure? Do they treat vulnerable people decently?
Above all, we begin to ask whether their actions correspond with their words. These are not exclusively wartime virtues, but war exposes their importance with unusual clarity because the consequences of discovering the answers are so much greater.
Trust is established by small things
One of the most useful lessons of living or working near the front is that character frequently reveals itself through seemingly insignificant behaviour. A person who arrives when they say they will, acknowledges uncertainty rather than pretending to know everything and respects another person’s boundaries has already provided several pieces of valuable information about their reliability.
Somebody who becomes irritated when asked reasonable questions, insists upon unnecessary secrecy or attempts to accelerate a relationship beyond its natural pace may deserve greater caution. None of these observations is decisive. Reliable people sometimes arrive late, honest people sometimes become defensive and secrecy is often entirely justified in wartime.
Soldiers and humanitarian workers may have excellent reasons for withholding information, particularly when other people’s safety is involved. Nevertheless, small interactions provide opportunities to assess whether another person is fundamentally respectful of your autonomy. A person who accepts a polite refusal demonstrates something important, while a person who repeatedly seeks to override your decisions demonstrates something else.
There is a practical difference between trusting somebody with a conversation, trusting them with a modest favour and trusting them with information or responsibilities carrying serious consequences. These levels of trust should not be confused. A brief encounter may justify warmth and goodwill without justifying the disclosure of sensitive information, just as a promising new acquaintance may deserve an opportunity to demonstrate reliability without immediately acquiring access to one’s personal life.
Rapid judgment and gradual trust are therefore not contradictory. The first determines the precautions appropriate to an immediate situation, while the second allows a relationship to develop as further evidence becomes available. The wise person in a war zone learns to make immediate decisions without unnecessarily turning those decisions into permanent judgments.
The dangerous attraction of certainty
People who spend extended periods in war zones may develop an exaggerated confidence in their capacity to read others. Having survived numerous difficult encounters, they may come to regard their instincts as virtually infallible. This is a dangerous psychological development because confidence accumulated through experience can easily turn into complacency.
Survival does not necessarily demonstrate that every previous judgment was sound. It may simply indicate that earlier mistakes did not produce catastrophic consequences. The individual who has repeatedly taken unnecessary risks without suffering injury may therefore come to confuse good fortune with superior judgment.
There is also the problem of confirmation bias. Once we have decided that somebody is trustworthy, we may reinterpret suspicious behaviour as harmless eccentricity. Once we have decided that somebody is dangerous, we may interpret every awkward remark as evidence of malicious intent. In either case, our original judgment begins determining how we interpret subsequent evidence.
War intensifies these tendencies because it creates a powerful emotional need for certainty. In an environment where so much is unpredictable, the belief that one can reliably distinguish friends from enemies provides psychological reassurance. Unfortunately, reassurance is not the same as accuracy, and confidence in one’s intuition can become particularly dangerous when it discourages verification.
A mature approach to personal judgment therefore requires an unusual combination of decisiveness and humility. We must be willing to act upon incomplete information while remaining prepared to revise our conclusions. We must recognise that personal experience can improve our judgment without imagining that it grants us an infallible understanding of human nature.
The person we instinctively distrust may become a loyal friend, while the person we immediately admire may eventually disappoint us. Both possibilities must remain open because experience should sharpen judgment rather than fossilise it.
The consequences of trauma
Another complicating factor is the extraordinary psychological pressure placed upon people living through war. In Ukraine, millions of people have experienced displacement, bereavement, financial insecurity, prolonged separation from loved ones or repeated exposure to bombardment. Soldiers may have endured experiences that remain almost impossible to communicate to those who have never participated in combat, while civilians who have lived under occupation may have learned habits of caution and concealment that persist long after liberation.
These experiences inevitably affect ordinary social behaviour. A person who appears withdrawn may be grieving. Somebody who seems suspicious may have previously been betrayed. A person who reacts disproportionately to an innocent question may be struggling with memories that the question has unexpectedly awakened.
War therefore demands greater compassion precisely when it also demands greater vigilance. This creates an apparent paradox because we must assess people more quickly while recognising that their outward behaviour may be less representative of their underlying character than would ordinarily be the case.
The resolution lies in distinguishing conduct from identity. We may decide that somebody’s behaviour makes a particular encounter unsafe without concluding that the person is morally defective. We may decline to participate in an activity without making accusations about the person who proposed it, thereby protecting ourselves without pretending to know more about another person’s character than the available evidence permits.
Such distinctions preserve something essential to civilised life. They allow us to protect ourselves without treating everybody around us as a potential enemy. That capacity becomes particularly valuable when fear itself threatens to become a habitual way of interpreting other human beings.
Journalism and the discipline of judgment
For journalists working in wartime Ukraine, these questions acquire particular significance. A journalist is professionally obliged to meet strangers, listen to conflicting accounts and ask questions that may make people uncomfortable. The profession depends upon openness to unfamiliar individuals and circumstances, yet precisely these qualities create vulnerabilities when the surrounding environment is dangerous.
A journalist may be approached by people claiming official authority, possessing supposedly confidential information or promising access to individuals of public importance. Some may be entirely sincere. Others may be exaggerating their connections, seeking publicity, pursuing private disputes or attempting to manipulate the journalist’s reporting.
The temptation is to assess such encounters principally through personal charm. A friendly manner, fluent conversation and apparent enthusiasm for one’s work can create an immediate sense of familiarity. Conversely, an awkward or uncommunicative source may appear unhelpful despite possessing information of genuine importance. Neither impression is a reliable substitute for verification.
A journalist must therefore develop two distinct disciplines. The first is rapid personal assessment: deciding whether an encounter appears safe, whether a conversation should continue and what precautions are appropriate. The second is evidential assessment: determining whether the person’s claims are true and whether their information can responsibly be published.
These disciplines must remain separate because somebody may be personally trustworthy but factually mistaken, while somebody thoroughly unpleasant may nevertheless provide accurate and important information. There is a further complication in that journalists working in conflict zones often develop friendships with the people whose experiences they document. Such relationships may be genuine and deeply valuable, but they cannot eliminate the professional obligation to distinguish affection from evidence.
This is particularly important in Ukraine, where the extraordinary solidarity generated by resistance to Russian aggression can create relationships of remarkable speed and emotional intensity. Shared adversity may reveal authentic character with unusual rapidity, but it may also encourage premature confidence. The journalist must remain capable of experiencing the former without succumbing carelessly to the latter.
Friendship under fire
There is nevertheless another side to this subject, and it is perhaps the most uplifting. War can accelerate the development of genuine friendships to a degree that peaceful life seldom permits. Two people who confront danger together may learn more about each other’s character in an afternoon than ordinary acquaintances discover over several years.
The reason is straightforward. Under pressure, people reveal their priorities. Some become concerned principally with their own preservation, while others instinctively assist those around them. Some remain patient and practical, while others become overwhelmed by anxiety or anger.
These reactions are not necessarily permanent measures of moral worth, because fear is universal and courage is not the absence of fear. Nevertheless, the experience of sharing difficult circumstances can provide evidence of character that is otherwise difficult to obtain. Behaviour under pressure reveals aspects of personality that ordinary social rituals are remarkably effective at concealing.
A friendship established through mutual assistance during an evacuation, a bombardment or a difficult journey may therefore possess an immediate depth that seems inexplicable to outsiders. The participants have seen something of one another that normal social life often keeps hidden. They have discovered not merely what the other person says about loyalty, courage or generosity but how that person behaves when those qualities carry a cost.
This is one of the paradoxical gifts of wartime existence. Although war destroys trust on a vast scale, it can also produce exceptionally intense bonds of human loyalty. The same environment that obliges us to become more cautious about strangers may teach us to value our true friends more profoundly than ever before.
The preservation of moral judgment
There is a final distinction that deserves particular attention. The need to make rapid judgments about people should not be confused with a licence to condemn them. To judge whether somebody is safe to trust in a particular situation is a practical exercise, whereas to decide that somebody is fundamentally good or bad is a moral exercise of much greater complexity.
The first may be unavoidable in wartime, while the second should ordinarily be approached with considerable restraint. This is especially important because prolonged exposure to war can make people cynical. Repeated encounters with dishonesty, selfishness or cruelty may encourage the belief that human beings are fundamentally untrustworthy, and such cynicism may eventually masquerade as experience.
Cynicism may appear sophisticated, but in reality it is often another form of intellectual laziness. The war in Ukraine offers ample evidence of human wickedness, most obviously in the deliberate violence inflicted upon civilians by Russia’s invasion. Yet it also offers abundant evidence of extraordinary goodness, demonstrated by soldiers, medics, rescuers, volunteers and ordinary citizens who repeatedly place the interests of others above their own.
Any philosophy of human character that acknowledges only one side of this equation is inadequate. The purpose of developing rapid personal judgment should therefore be to preserve our ability to participate safely in human relationships, not to retreat from them. We acquire discernment so that we can continue to extend kindness, accept hospitality, form friendships and assist strangers without exposing ourselves or others to unreasonable danger.
A society in which nobody trusts anybody cannot sustain itself. This is as true in wartime as it is in peace, although the stakes are immeasurably higher. Trust is therefore not merely a personal sentiment but part of the social infrastructure that war threatens and that civilised people must attempt to preserve.
Thirty seconds and a lifetime
Ultimately, the difference between judging people in war zones and judging them in civilian life is not that the fundamental principles of human character change. Honesty remains honesty, courage remains courage and kindness remains kindness. The difference is that war compresses the time available for recognising these qualities while magnifying the consequences of error.
We must often decide in thirty seconds what we would prefer to determine over several months. We must assess sincerity without mistaking charm for truth, recognise potential danger without succumbing to paranoia and remain compassionate towards people whose conduct may have been profoundly altered by suffering. These demands are intellectually exhausting precisely because there is seldom enough information to make the decision with complete confidence.
They also require two apparently contradictory attitudes. We must become quicker in our practical decisions and slower in our moral condemnations. We must learn to recognise warning signs without imagining that every warning sign reveals an enemy, and we must be willing to trust other people while retaining sufficient independence of judgment to withdraw that trust when circumstances require it.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of prolonged exposure to wartime conditions is that the best judge of character is not the person who claims always to know whom to trust. It is the person who understands the limitations of human judgment, acts prudently within those limitations and remains capable of changing their mind. In peaceful life, such qualities may be regarded as evidence of wisdom; in a war zone, they may be necessary for survival.
When the war eventually ends, those who have learned these lessons may discover that they have acquired something of enduring value. They may have become less impressed by appearances, more attentive to conduct, less tolerant of manipulation and more appreciative of authentic human loyalty. The habits acquired for survival may become virtues in peace, provided that vigilance does not harden into permanent suspicion.
War is a terrible teacher, and nobody should romanticise the education it provides. Nevertheless, it teaches certain lessons about human nature with a clarity that ordinary civilian life rarely approaches. Among them is the understanding that trust is one of our most precious possessions, that it should neither be surrendered carelessly nor withheld indiscriminately and that the capacity to distinguish between these alternatives is one of the defining characteristics of practical wisdom.
The art of judging character in wartime consists, in the end, of learning how to remain human in circumstances that continually threaten to deprive us of our humanity. That means learning when to trust and when to walk away, when to listen to instinct and when to question it, and when to extend compassion without abandoning prudence. War may force these decisions upon us in seconds, but the character with which we make them is built over a lifetime.
