Read People Like a Book: How to Analyze, Understand, and Predict People’s Emotions, Thoughts, Intentions, and Behaviors

by Patrick King

What do people care about? Asking about interests, values, goals, and fears is more or less asking about motivations.

Shadow projection is when a person unconsciously attributes his own shadow traits to another person. For example, someone who feels intellectually inferior may find themselves calling everyone and everything “stupid” or haughtily criticizing the efforts of others.

Be curious but be kind.

it’s about seeing wholes in a world that is often split, broken, divided, and unconscious.

A great way to consider yours and the other person’s shadow is to watch what feelings their behavior triggers in you.

observant people know that what a person insults you with is often nothing more than the label they can’t acknowledge they actually give themselves.

You’ve probably felt once or twice before as though you were dealing with a child who simply happened to be in the shape of a grown adult. If you notice someone suddenly acting with what seems like disproportionate emotion, pay attention. Feeling suddenly angry, hurt, defensive, or offended could be a clue that some nerve has been touched. The unconscious—whether that’s the shadow or the inner child, or both—has been activated somehow.

When we are adults, we are expected to take responsibility, show self-restraint, and behave with reason and respect for others. But a person in child mode may be (psychologically speaking) a child, which pushes you to respond as a parent would, i.e., with soothing, reprimanding, or taking responsibility for them.

where the behavior is coming from and why.

Every decision we make is based on gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.

pleasure principle wasn’t the only factor to motivate us – but it certainly was a powerful one.

A wounded animal is more motivated than a slightly uncomfortable one.

your feelings tend to overshadow rational thought.

People are able to exercise discipline, restraint, and self-control, and they are able to genuinely desire and derive pleasure from doing things that only pay off in the future, or only help others and not themselves.

Defense mechanisms are the specific ways we protect our ego, pride, and self-esteem.

Denial is one of the most classic defense mechanisms because it is easy to use.

All you have to do is say “no” often enough and you might begin to believe yourself, and that’s where the appeal of denial lies.

Rationalization is when you explain away something negative.

Rationalization can also help us feel at peace with poor decisions we’ve made, with phrases such as, “It was going to happen at some point, anyway.”

Intellectual honesty requires you to first defeat your natural tendencies to be dishonest.

repression is where a person pushes the thought or feeling so far out of consciousness, they “forget” it.

displacement might occur as a protection against unpleasant truths.

Projection is a defense mechanism that can cause considerable damage and chaos if not understood for what it

Whereas denial simply says, “This isn’t happening,” reaction formation goes a step further and claims, “Not only is that not happening, but the exact opposite is the case. Look!”

A woman might be terrified of her new cancer diagnosis and, rather than admit her fear, puts on a show to everyone of being courageous, preaching to others about how death is nothing to fear.

sublimation takes that emotion and channels it through a different, more acceptable outlet.

A woman may receive some bad news, but rather than get upset, she goes home and proceeds to do a massive spring clean of her home.

The first is the pyramidal tract, responsible for voluntary expressions (i.e., most macroexpressions), and the extrapyramidal tract, responsible for involuntary emotional facial expressions (i.e., microexpressions).

Scratching the nose, moving the head to the side, avoiding eye contact, uncertainty in speaking, and general fidgeting also indicate someone’s internal reality is not exactly lining up with the external—i.e., they might be lying.

It’s the more primitive, emotional, and perhaps honest part of our brain, the limbic brain, that’s responsible for these automatic responses.