Trait Judgmentalism: Contextual Moderation Failure and the Architecture of Evaluative Rigidity

Judgmentalism is pervasive across everyday life, yet the phenomenon has remained largely unformalised within psychological science. Existing constructs such as self-criticism, dogmatism, perfectionism, and Need for Closure, capture narrow aspects of harsh evaluation but do not explain why some individuals maintain rigid, negatively biased judgments even when contextual information is available. This paper introduces Trait Judgmentalism as a stable cognitive, emotional, and behavioural disposition to evaluate oneself and others through rigid, negatively biased standards that resist contextual moderation. A mechanistic account is proposed through Contextual Moderation Failure (CMF), a proposed disruption of reflective System 2 integration following intuitive appraisal. CMF explains how initial negative evaluations persist, expand into global character inferences, and shape downstream behaviour. A Tripartite Model is presented, linking (1) cognitive evaluative rigidity, (2) contingent negative affect, and (3) expressive or behavioural enforcement. The model distinguishes Trait Judgmentalism from adjacent constructs, including conscientiousness, humility, dogmatism, Emotional Intelligence, and general cognitive rigidity, by identifying its defining feature as a resistance to contextual updating rather than differences in general self-regulation, modest self-appraisal or ideological conviction.The framework provides theoretically grounded predictions across cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal domains, including reduced perspective-taking flexibility, elevated complaint and sanctioning behaviours, and resistance to revising impressions even when contextual explanations are acknowledged. These elements establish a coherent architecture for evaluating rigid appraisal tendencies and form the conceptual foundation for development of the Judgmentalism Assessment Scale and future empirical validation.Author Note: This paper provides the conceptual foundation for future empirical work on the Judgmentalism Assessment Scale (JAS). All analyses and writing were conducted independently. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Emile Boullineau. Portions of the text were lightly assisted by AI tools for grammar and phrasing. All ideas and theoretical proposals are solely my own.