What does it mean to read people?
Elangovan, February 7, 2019
“Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men and studying all the various editions of them” –Lord Chesterfield “Letters to His Son.”
Reading people is, therefore, the aspect of studying people including all their various editions –studying gestures whether consciously or unconsciously. Sigmund Freud once wrote that–“the unconscious mind of one human being can react upon that of another without passing through the conscious.”
These unconscious reactions can then become untested “facts” in which we respond to various situations. For instance, if we could subconsciously perceive a specific gesture as unfriendly, without the conscious control, we will be bringing about the belligerent reaction that profligate into a violent cycle of hostility.
If we could just stop and read body language and gestures consciously, subject them to cross-examination and verification, it would be possible for us to elevate the process to an entirely different plane before any communication degeneration is made. So, how does the subconscious mind affect your behavior?
The subconscious mind and behavior
Your subconscious mind plays a significant role in connection with your behavior. You experience a particular emotion or a sudden feeling to do something without really establishing where it came from, that is your subconscious mind at it again.
For instance, a young man who killed his parents grew up in a violent home which influences his behavior of hurting people. The young man grew up a violent person through his subconscious mind.
In other terms, you have no control over your subconscious mind. It is what brings out the true definition of your character—the unique you.
Why you should pay attention to the subconscious-generated behavior
The subconscious mind brings out the real behavior, in its purest form as it’s a behavior that you cannot possibly control or even aware when doing it.
Most tasks are performed through the conscious mind, but most actions heavily depend on the subconscious mind.
They work similarly to reflex action in some ways but vary somehow. When we talk of reflex actions like snapping at a fly that distracts you as you’re reading a book at the park.
Your body reacts to this disturbance yet your conscious mind is unaware that you responded to the ‘subconscious stimuli,’ and you realize later what really happened or never really recall at all,
Another example, in an exam room when you come across a relevantly difficult question, your conscious mind looks for the answer while your subconscious mind drives you to bite your nails, fidget or scratch your head.
How your mind feeds these physical activities to your brain is entirely a mystery because in most cases, you don’t realize it.
If you pay attention to the subconscious behavior, you will understand how to read people every time you interact with them.
How to read subconscious behavior
As we have seen above, reading people is a natural skill, again it takes a lot to do so. Humans are wired to socialize, and every time you interact with someone, you read something from them that was never verbally communicated. With that being said, reading people needs some practice, and this is what happens every time you interact:
- Consciously read them. You can consciously interpret the behavior, appearance, body language and even motives. You consciously think or verbalize your thoughts on a few things you think about that person.
- You subconsciously evaluate them. You judge their body language, facial expression, appearance, and behavior. You also read the motives on various levels and can decipher their actions.
- You respond to their actions in the manner you deem appropriate based on your evaluations. That happens instantaneously moments after subconscious evaluation.
This is the fundamental way of how our minds work. The subconscious evaluation is necessary for a response to occur. Here is a simple example to help you relate;
Think of a situation where you’re sitting in a café sipping your latté when a random man comes out of nowhere and says “Hi” in a friendly and calm way.
Your subconscious mind quickly picks up all the information including how he is dressed, his facial expression and his tone and it instantly gives feedback that the man looks overall okay and poses no threat, without you knowing it.
Even if you were not consciously thinking about it, your subconscious mind already did the homework and gave its findings long ago—you already subconsciously judged him. The next thing you do is say “hi” back based on the information you received from the evaluation.
If you continue with the conversation, your conscious mind will now judge him based on his mannerisms, behavior, tone, and facial expression, your subconscious mind will also do the same.
It is quite prevalent to consciously notice some behaviors that may grab your attention like yelling rambunctiously and act appropriately. Let’s see how the conscious mind reads people.
How to consciously read people
From the above examples, we can conclude that the human brain plays a significant role in evaluating human behavior and can send signals. That means that weren’t badly off at reading people; it’s only that some of us are better than others.
Reading people isn’t just about their body language but their intent, belief, and behavior. If you learn this, you get into a better position of detecting threat or sympathy towards a person.
It doesn’t mean that you won’t come across cunning people who will test your reading skills, but through experience, you’ll learn to profile everyone with precision.
Understand people’s basic needs
By “basic needs” I mean the Maslow’s Hierarchy of wants/needs, and according to Maslow, these needs or desires occur from a ground-up approach.
The most potent need is the physiological needs like food or shelter. Based on the situation a person is in, their personality traits, level of desperation and demand, they will act up accordingly to fulfill the needs.
Sometimes they may have to go an extra mile to fulfill these particular needs even if it means breaking the laws of nature.
For instance, an extremely hungry person may go to the extremity of killing another human being and eating them for food. The same way a lion may defile the law of nature by eating another carnivore to satisfy its hunger.
It is also the same desires that leads one to kill another person for the thrill of it. That person is satisfying their self- fulfillment needs.
Read the emotional intelligence
Some basic principle here; to understand others, you must first understand yourself—Western Mastery.
To read other people, you must begin developing emotional intelligence like self-emotional awareness, managing own emotions, using your feelings to achieve goals, reading other people’s emotions, and manipulating them.
Your emotions are partially displayed by your subconscious brain—meaning that you may not be fully capable of hiding your feelings, but you can learn to control how you present them.
This way you can subsequently take charge of someone else emotions and manipulate them or instead evaluate the reason they’re being displayed.
The human brain evolved reading various emotions like sadness, happiness, anger, fear, anxiety and many more, but there is always pretense which invalidates the above emotions, but if you’re emotionally intelligent, no one can take advantage of it.
Read body language both consciously and subconsciously.
Another critical element in reading people is reading what their body language. The ability to judge people is entirely natural for human beings.
When reading body language, it’s essential to pay attention to one’s body movement as well as emotion and establish whether the two activities clash or not.
Microexpressions, are facial expressions that reveal true feelings that in most cases, the person may not want you to see or are unaware about—the subconscious behavior. Such behavior is mostly unintentional unless it’s pretense.
For instance, let’s take an example of Mary who is being questioned by detectives about a murder that happened in her neighbor’s home.
When Mary is asked whether she is aware that her neighbor died, she responds by widening her eyes such that the inner white part is visible and opening her mouth in a circular manner and quickly covers it with her mouth and says “No!”. Her eyes too suddenly turn watery.
In Mary’s example the detective can read three things:
- That Mary is shocked by the news, which implies that she is acting through her subconscious mind appropriately in accordance with the situation.
- Mary subconsciously reacted (behaved) to the bad news but did it unintentionally when she covered her mouth with her hand to conceal the shock.
- Mary acted upon her emotions subconsciously when her eyes became watery –meaning that she was crying, but was conscious about it and in control.
While Mary could “pretend” or “lie” by displaying such behavior to throw the detective under the bus, the subconscious mind could have messed up her actions.
The subconscious mind never lies. Earlier on we discussed that the subconscious mind is always the first to read the circumstance and establish whether the conditions or the surrounding environment is safe or threatening.
Therefore, in our case, it would have been quite difficult for Mary to pull up three subconscious actions at the same time to conceal her guilt.
References
Berenger, T., Travis, N., Schanz, H., Borden, B., Nabatoff, D., Case, G., & HBO Films. (2005). Body language. United States: HBO Films.
Caro, M. (2003). The psychology and body langauage of poker: Book of poker tells. New York: Cardoza Publishing.
Lord, V. B., & Cowan, A. D. (2011). Interviewing in criminal justice: Victims, witnesses, clients, and suspects. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Mark Andrejevic. (2010). Reading the Surface: Body Language and Surveillance. Linköping University.
Smith, S. (1975). The power of the mind.
Troland, L. T. (n.d.). The subconscious mind. The mystery of mind, 216-232. doi:10.1037/11471-014