Sixth sense?

Why do we stereotype? I was sat in the train this morning (and mercifully my journey to work was very good today) and a man was sat across from me and without any provocation I decided he was really creepy. Human beings deal with categories and clearly labelled boxes much better than abstractions I know, but it seemed quite a strong feeling to have over a complete stranger. He was a fairly ordinary looking man, clean and relatively well dressed and yet I got the distinct sense he was someone I would not trust. So what did I base this on, is it intuition or sixth sense? Maybe. Or sadly it may just indicate I am mean spirited and judge people unfairly.
There is some argument that women (not all women) have a much more developed sense of intuition – something to do with motherhood or some such. Sadly I have a much more prosaic explanation; you only have to look at the figures for rape, assault and violence against women to know that developing intuition and instinct is a sensible survival technique for any woman.
Anyway, it made me very curious and I like to challenge myself as to why and how I think about things. Of course, I’ll never know if this man really was sinister and up to no good, or just another ordinary commuter – like myself – trying to stay awake and get to work on time…

An interesting start to my day.