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How can i read people?

Illmatic

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Feb 19, 2011
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been watching the Mentalist lately and wow...he got everything i ever wanted. The ability pay attention to all the detail and then accuratly read someone's mind. How can i learn?
 

uncommonentity

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May 3, 2011
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Look for visual evidence. Draw conclusions. Draw every conclusion. You must however understand that these conclusions are assumptions. Some of them will be correct some of them will be errors. Research the progressive steps of what make a product finalized then reverse time. See a dude with a beard don't just take it as the guy wants to have a god damn beard and start thinking about how he may have a beard because he neglects his personal hygiene. Be judgemental but never blindly judgemental. Gather evidence to your assumptions and turn them into fact by asking carefully crafted questions.
 

jimrckhnd

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Jul 16, 2011
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INTP
I observe draw logical inferences and then cross index with intuition. I've learned to "listen to the voices" - while it may be something of a self fulfilling prophecy I rarely change my mind about a negative first impression or hunch and further data often confirms the initial suspicion. I have a pretty strong "bull shit" detector and it operates on observing and detecting "what does not belong" and then chewing on the discrepancy.

I try to place all data in to the context of the situation: what clothes, what accessories, do they wear scent? How much and how good? Are they observing or not, where do place themselves in a space? What kind of language, how loud or soft.

If there is an inconsistency in context – talking loudly in a library or softly in a bar – analyze probable causes. If there is an inconstancy in pattern – expensive watch but run down shoes… again, what is that telling me (in Washington if male it is a strong tip he’s a lawyer). And if your intuition starts sending up flares that something is off… listen.

Unfortunately with people I end up liking I’m not always accurate in initial assessments: I’m better at spotting the “black hats” then the “white hats”. Occasionally however, I meet somebody who I take an immediate liking to – this is very dangerous as it robs me of my objectivity. So I resist.

Limitation of my approach I'm afraid.
 

Rasofy

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So you wanna be a michael westen + macgyver + the mentalist combo.
Seriously dude, just be happy with what you have. Trust me (and I know you won't), your happiness levels wouldn't change even if you had all those skills. :wtf:
 

Illmatic

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^^i don't wanna be them. I just want the skills, i don't want to be MacGuyver.

I just want the ability to read people. I want to be a good strategist.
 

Lily flower

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Read a lot of body language books. They really help a lot.
 

Mole

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Reading and Listening

been watching the Mentalist lately and wow...he got everything i ever wanted. The ability pay attention to all the detail and then accuratly read someone's mind. How can i learn?

Well, we can read people like a book or we can listen to them like a telephone.

If we are literate, we are inclined to read them like a book, only we are careful not to judge them by their cover.

But if we listen, we hear their contours, we hear their tone, and we are inclined to reply.

If we read them like a book, we read them lineally and sequentially. We see them as independent individuals occupying a particular time and space.

But if we listen to them like a telephone, time and space are abolished, we feel the same things at the same time, and we join the electric tribe in the global village.
 

entropie

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never believe you could read people
 

Mole

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never believe you could read people

Hey, if you can read a book, you can read people.

Reading is a way of looking at the world. It is a way of looking at books and looking at people. So we say, I can read you, Entropie, like a book.

On the other hand, if we come from a spoken culture, we have a way of listening to the world and each other. And likewise, if we come from an electric culture, we listen to each other like the telephone.

So spoken cultures, that is, tribal, illiterate cultures, are quite like electric cultures.
 

entropie

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Yea but cultures hunt you with forks and torches if they get to know that you can read them
 

Eckhart

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It's TV. I think it is happening there in an exaggerated way. But yeah, I guess you can improve in your people reading skills by observing people a lot, paying attention to their body language, learn some theory about human behaviour etc.
 
G

Glycerine

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Be highly observant: visual cues, tone, consistency/inconsistency, vibes, and patterns
 

Stanton Moore

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Resist the urge to draw conclusions (because it clouds your vision in the short term). Observe. Listen. Assume that everything you see or hear may point to something else, but may not. connect the dots. Hear the words someone chooses. Look for emotional subtexts and body language, including fidgets and flashes of facial expression, and when they happen. Look for things the person is avoiding. Constantly ask 'why'? Remember that you can't rally 'know' the answer from these things. It all just points in a direction.
 

miss fortune

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interact with a lot of people on a daily basis (we're talking something like 50+) and watch them while you interact with them... you will start noticing patterns over time :)
 

ragashree

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^^i don't wanna be them. I just want the skills, i don't want to be MacGuyver.

I just want the ability to read people. I want to be a good strategist.

For a start, stop asking other people dumb questions and expecting them to have the answers to everything you need to know so you don't have to sit down and work it out for yourself then, because they don't and never will.

Next, and once you are used to the process of thinking for yourself and not hoping other people will think for you, start trying to apply apply your own personal observation and reasoning powers to your experiences.

Then, analyse this using what you have learned. You need to ncorporate knowledge from a variety of sources, don't become too reliant on any one theory because there is no psychological model that singlehandedly explains the manifold complexities of human behaviour all by itself, however much some people might like to believe that there is and try to convince you of this.

Then, if you have managed to form a conclusion, ensure that it is tentative and open to new interpretations in the light of any further knowledge. Don't just assume that because it makes sense to you, it is necessarily correct and you don't need to take anything further into account. You will most likely just end up looking like a closed-minded fool if you insist on making up your mind at the earliest possible opportunity and sticking to your initial conclusion like a famished pit bull to a juicy shank bone. Also you will most probably be wrong more often than you are right, and, very importantly, not able to realise that you are wrong when you are, which makes the whole exercise essentially worthless, unless you were trying to make yourself feel omnipotent and clever (which is what delusional people like to do) rather than actually understanding the other person (which is what sensible people like to do).

Finally, do what you can to check the veracity of your conclusions. If you got it all wrong then fine, you need to rip up the book and start again and start again; it's better than persisting down a misguided path just to make things fit together neatly in your own mind. Humans are complicated beings and there are no easy answers to the question of what makes others tick for any of us, limited as we are by the subjectivity of our own knowledge and perceptions and inability to directly access what others percieve and think.
 

Mole

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The Epistemology of the Book and the Epistemology of the Telephone

If we are blind to our epistemology, we can't see.

We all know how to read a book, and so we apply the same epistemology to a person.

But what about a different epistemology?

Rather than saying, read you like a book, we can say, listen to you like the telephone.

So now we have two epistemologies - the epistemology of the book and the epistemology of the telephone.

Each epistemology tell us something different.
 

Illmatic

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[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btP_vy5cQq4"][/YOUTUBE]


Can i learn to do this?
 
T

ThatGirl

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First start paying attention to the ways everyone acts the same under different circumstances. Then watch for individuality. So if you say, go to a funeral, and observe all the people who are crying because they are upset. Then you look for the individual ways in which they mourn. Then look at the people who are not crying, and how they are reacting to the situation.

Try to find common themes among the people you are watching. For instance you may find that all the people from one bucket (the loud emotional crying) share similar views on life, and loss. The people who mourn silently have other views, beliefs, or ways of expressing themselves. You come to get to know how people interact from a natural state. The groupings of people who interact the same, under any possible condition.

Then you can observe the same characteristics under different circumstances, and get a feel for how each sub-category differs in different circumstances. Then you pick up when something is off. Out of the norm, you have this person acting in this way, and can narrow in that something is different about how they are perceiving the current situation. Compare that against the knowledge you have acquired about different reactions under different circumstances, and see which reaction fits naturally to the current situation.

Then take the unnatural reaction and apply it to the normal situation, and connect the ideas of why someone would think that way under these circumstances.

Once you have a hypothesis, watch for cues to either support or negate your idea. If they cues seem to conclude that you were correct in your reading, good for you. If not, start again and see where you made a mistake.

Basically, learn what people do. Learn what individual people do. Learn what is the norm, so you can pick up on the abnormal, then personalize the experience to the person you are trying to read.

Did that make any sense? Lol!
 

entropie

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You'll find in peoples minds nothing you wouldnt know yourself. It's just their way to draw a conclusion or to make a decision that will be different and that you'll never be able to know. Yet with an interchanging perspective of yourself, which is won by experience, there cant be too much to shock you anymore
 
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