Looking for stories of reading people, either behavioral clues or logical deductions of what people say
Do you have interesting stories from your life or job of reading people and making useful deductions?
I’m working on a book about reading people. It will be an offshoot of my People Who Read People podcast, and use various quotes/observations from the various researchers and in-the-field practitioners I’ve talked to for that show.
One focus of the book will be discussing the many bad ideas/takes on physical/nonverbal reads of people promoted by various “behavior experts.”
It will also delve into differences I see between game/sport environments and non-game (real-world) environments (e.g., why I think physical reads are clearly much more useful and reliable in game scenarios than non-game scenarios).
It will also include examples of reading people by making logical deductions of what people actually say (the content) and do; and argue that you’d be much better off focusing on that than ever focusing on nonverbal stuff (not to say that reading nonverbals is useless, but to say that in most serious, high-stakes scenarios you usually won’t get many useful, actionable clues).
Do you have examples of reading people in your job/career or personal life that come to mind? Instances where someone’s facial expression, nonverbal reaction, or something they said gave you actionable insight and adjusted how you approached a situation? I’d love to hear any examples you have, of whatever sort. There’s a chance I might include your story/example in my book or elsewhere, fwiw.
One example of a logical deduction came up yesterday. I saw that Brent Ratner was taking heat for a photo that seemed to show him and Jeffrey Epstein with two young women, whose faces had been hidden. Ratner defended himself and said that that was a picture of him and his ex-fiance; but he also didn’t want to name her so as not to drag her into limelight. I saw many people doubting him and saying things like “sure, likely story” but I immediately thought he was telling the truth, for the simple reason that if he were being deceptive about that photo and wanted to claim it was someone he personally knew (as opposed to a woman he had only met at a party) he almost certainly would have said that it was just a “girlfriend.” Saying it was his “fiance” is highly specific, and that makes the claim easier to investigate (e.g., researching his known long-term relationships at that time) and thus easier to prove/disprove. Deceivers, in general, prefer to use ambiguous language, as they don’t want to be pinned down; specificity can make statements easier to prove/disprove.
Now, sure, I could end up being wrong here (I haven’t even looked into this story at all), but these are the kinds of logical deductions I think are most useful in the real world, when putting pieces together about things said in interviews and interrogations. And usually it’ll be the meta-level aggregation of multiple clues in people’s story/content (not a single clue) that will help people form pictures of what’s going on. And while these things are often not actionable (as you still want evidence and not just clues) they can have some practical value in directing one’s attention/focus and helping form follow-up questions and so on.
Do you have little examples like this that led you in one direction or another when it comes to work/situations you were personally involved in, and that led to you taking one tack or another?
I always try to carefully consider the motivations behind different actions before passing judgment. For instance, I've had some bad work experiences that I worry most would reduce down to "corporate evil" when in reality the situation involved innocent disorganization, supervisors occupied with other understandable priorities, or winding up in a frustrating position because the company liked me but didn't have any proper work for me. There's a multitude of reasons why things go wrong in the workplace beyond neglect, abuse, or greed.
As an indie creator, I'm constantly questioning... when I cross an imaginary dollar line or stop putting up a "quirky artist" persona, will people start calling me greedy for high prices I can't control or rushed/low-quality content that was previously forgiven as me being a developing artist? Once corporations become faceless, it's easy to lose sight of the humanity behind them, easy to reduce every motivation down to "greed," easy to assume the workers and directors don't also have to make tough choices or make mistakes thanks to being humans.
On the bright side of the creative world, writing fiction has actually helped me a lot in learning to understand where people are coming from. Several times now I've written a POV from a group or viewpoint I was passionately opposed to and learned to see why the "other side" thinks like they do. It's helped me break down my own biases and realize that those whose ideas I consider wrong/harmful aren't "crazy," they're just human like me.