How To Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

by David Brooks

A study of Japanese businesspeople found that they are typically comfortable with eight-second pauses between one comment and another, roughly twice as long as Americans generally tolerate.

I learned another valuable lesson about asking good questions from Condoleezza Rice. When she was secretary of state, she would invite me to her office every other month or so for an off-the-record conversation. I didn’t cover foreign policy much, or know much about her day-to-day activities, so my questions were ill-informed and kind of dumb. I finally asked her why she kept inviting me back. She said it was because my questions were so broad and general that they helped her step back from the minutiae of her job and see the big picture. Sometimes a broad, dumb question is better than a smart question, especially one meant to display how well-informed you are.

The men in the study with warm relationships with their fathers enjoyed their vacations more through life, were better able to use humor as a coping mechanism, and were more content in their retirements. A warm childhood environment7 was also a better predictor of adult social mobility than intelligence.

On the other hand, men with a poor relationship8 with their mothers were more likely to suffer from dementia in old age. Those who grew up in cold homes took more prescription drugs of all kinds, and spent five times as much time in psychiatric hospitals.

One problem with anger, for example, is that it has to find things to attach itself to. Angry people are always in search of others they can be angry at. Anger is unattractive. Anger is stupid. A person who is perpetually angry is always mishearing and misreading others. He misperceives what the other person said so he can have a pretext to go on the vicious attack. Worst of all, anger escalates. People are always talking about venting anger or controlling anger or directing anger. In fact, the anger is always in control, ratcheting up higher and higher, consuming the host.

Introspection isn’t the best way to repair your models; communication is.

Over the centuries many philosophers assumed that reason is separate from emotions—reason is the cool, prudential charioteer, and emotions are the hard-to-control stallions.

None of that is true. Emotions contain information.15 Unless they are out of control, emotions are supple mental faculties that help you steer through life. Emotions assign value to things; they tell you what you want and don’t want. I feel love for this person and want to approach him; I feel contempt for that person and want to avoid her. Emotions help you adjust to different situations.

People high in conscientiousness are less likely to procrastinate, tend to be a bit perfectionist, and have high achievement motivation. They are likely to avoid drugs and to stick to fitness routines. As you’d expect, high conscientiousness predicts all sorts of good outcomes: higher grades in school, more career success, longer life spans. Nevertheless, it’s not as if people who score high in conscientiousness are all enjoying fantastic careers and living to age ninety. The world is complicated, and many factors influence the outcomes of a life. But more conscientious people do tend to display more competence and grit.

High neuroticism in adolescence predicts lower career attainment and worse relationships in adulthood.

Furthermore, understanding a person’s personality traits is one key to knowing how to treat them appropriately. The geneticist and psychiatrist Danielle Dick argues that it’s very important for parents21 to have a sense of their kid’s personality traits. That’s because there is no such thing as the right way to parent. There’s only the right way to parent that brings together the particular personality of the parent and the particular personality of the child.

Danielle Dick adds that a lot of parenting is pushing gently against your kid’s traits: encouraging your timid child to try new experiences or teaching your extroverted child to slow down and have some quiet time. Punishing children so they won’t repeat bad behavior doesn’t work, she argues. Focusing on the “positive opposite” does. Instead of calling attention to the behavior you want your child to stop, call attention to the behavior you want them to do.