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

by Patrick King

Long story, this means that what people say is often the worst indicator of what they actually want to convey. Even their tone of voice only tells you about thirty-eight percent of the actual story.

http://socialintelligence.labinthewild.org/

Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow. To put it very simply, the shadow contains all those aspects of our nature that we have disowned, ignored, or turned away from. These are the parts of our being we hide from others—and even from ourselves.

"Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. It may be, in part, one's link to more primitive animal instincts, which are superseded during early childhood by the conscious mind.”

Shadow projection is when a person unconsciously attributes his own shadow traits to another person.

The next time you meet someone, quickly run through the following questions to help you see them on a deeper level: What is this person actively and consciously portraying to me right now? What might this person be unwilling to acknowledge about themselves? How might this unacknowledged part of themselves be unconsciously driving the behavior I see on the surface? How is this person making me feel right now? Do I feel like they are projecting onto me or triggering my own shadow? How can I communicate compassion and understanding for what’s in their shadow, right now?

The pleasure principle asserts that the human mind does everything it can to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. It doesn’t get simpler than that. In that simplicity, we find some of life’s most universal and predictable motivators.

The answer to the question, “what is motivating the person in front of me?” is therefore always “pleasure” – in one form or another.

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

Emotion beats logic. When it comes to the pleasure principle, your feelings tend to overshadow rational thought.

Survival overrides everything. When our survival instinct gets activated, everything else in our psychological and emotional makeup turns

the rational choice theory, embodied by the jokingly named Homo economicus. This states that all of our choices and decisions spring entirely from self-interest and the desire to bring as much pleasure to our lives as possible.

When the ego senses danger, it has no interest or time to consider the facts. Instead, it seeks to alleviate discomfort in the quickest way possible. And that means you lie to yourself so you can keep the ego safe and sound.

We try to cover up the truth, deflect attention from it, or develop an alternative version that makes the actual truth seem less hurtful.

In your pursuit of truth and clear thought, your ego will rear its ugly head like the enraged porcupine. It has set up a series of tactical barriers to keep you from learning something that might upset your belief system, and it is only after you can rein in your ego that you are open to learning. After all, you can’t defend yourself and listen at the same time.

These mechanisms are there to protect us from experiencing negative emotions. They work in the moment, but in the long run, they are ineffective since they rob us of the opportunity to face, accept, and digest inevitably negative emotions as they crop up.

Rationalization is when you explain away something negative.

repression. Whereas in denial the reality is refused or downright rejected, repression is where a person pushes the thought or feeling so far out of consciousness, they “forget” it. It’s as though the threatening emotion never existed in the first place.

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.

Let’s consider what are called “pacifying behaviors.” These can offer a key insight into someone who is feeling stressed, unsure, or threatened. Essentially, a pacifying behavior is what it sounds like—the (unconscious) attempt to self-soothe in the face of some perceived threat. When we feel stressed, our limbic brain may compel us to make little gestures designed to calm us: touching the forehead, rubbing the neck, fiddling with hair, or wringing the hands are all behaviors intended to soothe stress.

Pay attention to this behavior and you’ll notice how it reveals someone’s fears and insecurities in real-time. Someone might say something a little aggressive and another person responds by leaning back slightly, crossing the arms, and putting one hand up to the throat. Notice this in real-time and you can infer that this particular statement has aroused some fear and uncertainty.

Puffing out the cheeks and exhaling loudly is also a gesture that releases considerable stress.

“Leg cleansing” is another, and it entails wiping down the legs as though to wash them or brush off dust. This can be missed if it’s hidden under a table, but if you can notice it, it is a strong indication of an attempt to self-soothe during stressful moments.

“Ventilating” is another behavior you may not pay much attention to. Notice someone pulling their shirt collar away from their neck or tossing the hair away from the shoulders as though to cool off.

The general principle is pretty obvious: bodies expand when they are comfortable, happy, or dominant. They contract when unhappy, fearful, or threatened.

Imagine you have no words at all to describe what you’re looking at; just observe. Is the body in front of you relaxed and comfortable in space, or is there some tightness, tension, and unease in the way the limbs are held?

Knowing what’s going on with another person allows you to be a better communicator and speak to what people are actually feeling rather than what they’re merely saying.

Pouw’s theory is that people are able to unconsciously detect subtle but important shifts in voice pitch and volume, as well as speed changes, that accompany different gestures. When you make a gesture, your whole body gets involved, including your voice. In other words, when you hear a voice, you are hearing multiple aspects about that person’s body.

The MBTI has been one of the most popular methods for people to evaluate and categorize themselves—of course, this means we should understand it to categorize others.

observed many people taking job opportunities willy-nilly. However, it bothered them that many of those people were taking jobs that didn’t necessarily pertain to their skills. They combined their observations with the work of psychologist Carl Jung, who believed that archetypes came from models of people, behavior, and their personalities. He strongly suggested that these archetypes came innately due to the influence of human behavior.

information received directly from that external world. This may come in the form of using his or her five senses—sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Decisions come in more immediate and experienced-based ways. For someone using intuition, he or she believes information from an internal world—their intuition—over external evidence. This comes in the form of having that “gut feeling.” He or she digs a little deeper into detail and tries to connect patterns. It may take a little longer before a decision can be made.