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

by Patrick King

If you’re having an argument with a partner, and they’re angry and defensive, you may suddenly see their behavior much more clearly if you understand it as a scared child essentially throwing a tantrum.

The pleasure principle was first raised in public consciousness by the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, though researchers as far back as Aristotle in ancient Greece noted how easily we could be manipulated and motivated by pleasure and pain.

The pleasure principle asserts that the human mind does everything it can to seek out pleasure and avoid pain.

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

People work harder to avoid pain than to get pleasure. While everyone wants pleasure as much as they can get it, their motivation to avoid pain is actually far stronger. The instinct to survive a threatening situation is more immediate than eating your favorite candy bar, for instance. So when faced with the prospect of pain, the brain will work harder than it would to gain access to pleasure.

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

Our perceptions of pleasure and pain are more powerful drivers than the actual things.

Pleasure and pain are changed by time. In general, we focus on the here and now: what can I get very soon that will bring me happiness?

The pleasure and pain that might happen months or years from now don’t really register with us—what’s most important is whatever’s right at our doorstep.

When it comes to the pleasure principle, your feelings tend to overshadow rational thought. You might know that doing something will be good or bad for you.

The pleasure principle is related to an idea that comes from economics and the attempt to predict markets and human buying behavior:

Homo economicus.

It may not always hold up (otherwise market and stock prices would be one hundred percent predictable), but it provides more support for the simple nature of many of our motivations.

little more complex,

theory boiled everything down to one revolutionary idea: human beings are a product of a set of basic human needs, the deprivation of which is the primary cause of most psychological problems. Fulfilling these needs is what drives us on a daily basis.

philanthropy

what is convenient and what is comfortable.

We can observe people to understand which stage of life they are in, what is currently important to them, and what they require to get to the next level in the hierarchy.

Consider a counselor

beaten black and blue

the problem is that the ego doesn’t allow for acknowledgment and analysis of what really happened. It blinds you.

automatic strategies that the constantly neurotic ego puts into action because it’s terrified of looking foolish or wrong. Unfortunately, that’s the worst zone to be in, as it means you don’t know what you don’t know.

this manner of thinking can become the factors that drive your decisions, thinking, and evaluations of anything and anyone.

ardent

Why would Fred continue to insist, against all reasonable and provable evidence, that his idol was innocent? Because his ego was so wrapped up in his worship of the pop star that it was predisposed to consider him blameless. For him to believe the truth would have meant a devastating blow to almost everything he believed in

rein in your ego that you are open to learning.

you can’t defend yourself and listen at the same time.

defense mechanisms are also a powerful predictor of behavior and will give you a deep insight into why people do what they do.

besmirching

Thoughts dictated by self-protection don’t overlap with clear, objective thoughts.

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shortcomings

homophobic

When you were young, life was easier and less demanding—to cope with threatening emotions, many of us return there, acting “childish” as a way to cope.

sublimation. In the same way that projection and displacement take the negative emotions and place them elsewhere, sublimation takes that emotion and channels it through a different, more acceptable outlet.

inadvertently

Physical appearance can tell you a lot about a person’s feelings, motivations, and fears, even if they’re actively trying to conceal these. In other words, the body doesn’t lie!

to remember that no single piece of information is enough to “prove” anything, and that the art of reading people this way comes down to taking a holistic view of the full scenario as it unfolds in front of you.

Haggard and Isaacs in the 1960s.

Paul Ekman expanded on his own theory on microexpressions and published a book, Telling Lies.

microexpressions are spontaneous, tiny contractions of certain muscle groups that are predictably related to emotions and are the same in all people, regardless of upbringing, background, or cultural expectation.

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

real emotion may “leak”

microexpressions are not very different from macroexpressions in the muscles that are involved; the main difference is in their speed. Ekman demonstrated, however, that these quick flashes of muscle contraction are so fast that people miss them: ninety-nine percent of people were unable to perceive them. Nevertheless, he also claims that people can be trained to look for microexpressions and in particular learn to detect liars, a classic example of saying one thing and feeling another.

look for discrepancies between what is said and what is actually demonstrated through facial expressions.

classic indicators that you are being lied to include lifting the shoulders slightly while someone is vehemently confirming the truth of what they’re saying. 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 worth mentioning here that this is not a foolproof method and that research has mostly failed to find a strong relationship between body language, facial expression, and deceitfulness. No single gesture alone indicates anything. Many psychologists have since pointed out that discrepancies in microexpressions can actually indicate discomfort, nervousness, stress, or tension, without deception being involved.

enhance our own empathy and emotional intelligence and foster a richer understanding of the people around us.

prefrontal cortex (the more intellectual and abstract part) is a little removed from the body, and more under conscious control, it’s also the part that’s capable of lying.

Navarro claims that the majority of communication is nonverbal anyway—meaning you’re actively missing out on the bulk of the message by not considering body language.