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YO!

48 (19%)

I suspect I am, but am not diagnosed as such.

32 (12.6%)

NO!

164 (64.8%)

I've been diagnosed as such, but suspect I am not.

9 (3.6%)

Total Members Voted: 252

[Darvi]

[Grakelin]

Their example of a cold read is so weak. Whenever I do fortune telling at parties and other social events, I just interpret the meanings of the tarot cards, getting some fairly specific details, and it's way more fun than this random "I say things that apply to everybody" thing all the "professionals" are trying to sell you on.

[G-Flex]

So if you look into the eyes of someone that likes you, their pupils will be dilated. If their pupils are tiny and you're not standing in the sun, they don't like your face at all.

On the other hand, while learning how to recognize cues and body language well is certainly a good thing, you can't rely on tricks like this as if they're gospel, either. There's an amount of intuition and complexity involved that isn't picked up by simple rules, and people's behaviors can differ wildly across the board. Last thing we need are people who think their significant others don't like them anymore based on something as silly as the size of their pupils.

[Starver]

Last thing we need are people who think their significant others don't like them anymore based on something as silly as the size of their pupils.

I could now plumb the depths[1] of simile by talking about other size differences being taken as indicators.  But that might be considered crude, so I won't.

[1] NI{nnuendo}I.

[KaelGotDwarves]

So if you look into the eyes of someone that likes you, their pupils will be dilated. If their pupils are tiny and you're not standing in the sun, they don't like your face at all.

On the other hand, while learning how to recognize cues and body language well is certainly a good thing, you can't rely on tricks like this as if they're gospel, either. There's an amount of intuition and complexity involved that isn't picked up by simple rules, and people's behaviors can differ wildly across the board. Last thing we need are people who think their significant others don't like them anymore based on something as silly as the size of their pupils.

You're not supposed to take anything as "gospel". But there's a set of information there based on psychological evaluation and studies and generally applies so take what you can from it. It'll never apply in 100% of cases but if you apply it correctly you'll be able to read people better and act empathically with people, for good or evil.

And what you called silly is shown to be quite true by psychological scientific studies, by the way

[Tellemurius]

So if you look into the eyes of someone that likes you, their pupils will be dilated. If their pupils are tiny and you're not standing in the sun, they don't like your face at all.

On the other hand, while learning how to recognize cues and body language well is certainly a good thing, you can't rely on tricks like this as if they're gospel, either. There's an amount of intuition and complexity involved that isn't picked up by simple rules, and people's behaviors can differ wildly across the board. Last thing we need are people who think their significant others don't like them anymore based on something as silly as the size of their pupils.

You're not supposed to take anything as "gospel". But there's a set of information there based on psychological evaluation and studies and generally applies so take what you can from it. It'll never apply in 100% of cases but if you apply it correctly you'll be able to read people better and act empathically with people, for good or evil.

And what you called silly is shown to be quite true by psychological scientific studies, by the way

I have been training as a psychologist for a while and i have been able to read people perfect now i have been considered a empath. oh boy...........

its not something you want to share though, most information would not be shared with the patient and wouldn't tell the patient that you can "read the person"

[ToonyMan]

You just roll with your conversations.  I don't see a reason on trying to discuss this because it's an odd topic and I can't think of anything to say of it.  I guess you would learn this from growing up as an experience.

[Vector]

I have been training as a psychologist for a while and i have been able to read people perfect now i have been considered a empath. oh boy...........

. . .

Cool story, bro.

[MorleyDev]

A good 'trick' I've found is to stand in front of a mirror and simply move your face through every emotion you can think of. Useful for being able to put up an emotion you aren't feeling when you want to seem to feel it, and useful when you spot that expression in another ^^

Heck, if you're willing to study you could always try and look up the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and some of Paul Ekman's research into facial expressions and body language.

[G-Flex]

So if you look into the eyes of someone that likes you, their pupils will be dilated. If their pupils are tiny and you're not standing in the sun, they don't like your face at all.

On the other hand, while learning how to recognize cues and body language well is certainly a good thing, you can't rely on tricks like this as if they're gospel, either. There's an amount of intuition and complexity involved that isn't picked up by simple rules, and people's behaviors can differ wildly across the board. Last thing we need are people who think their significant others don't like them anymore based on something as silly as the size of their pupils.

You're not supposed to take anything as "gospel". But there's a set of information there based on psychological evaluation and studies and generally applies so take what you can from it. It'll never apply in 100% of cases but if you apply it correctly you'll be able to read people better and act empathically with people, for good or evil.

And what you called silly is shown to be quite true by psychological scientific studies, by the way

I didn't mean that the fact itself is silly. Sure, I'm willing to believe that, in general, it's true. However, if you're in a situation like that, the most that fact will do is maybe allow you to guess slightly better, which shouldn't be necessary. The problem is when people take little tidbits like "people's eyes dilate when looking at you if they like you" and then assume that one is a necessary or sufficient cause of the other, which is bogus. Hell, this goes for most tips like that. Things like that are for enhancing your intuition and making better guesses about things, and that's about it. No single reflexive or behavioral quirk (and often, not even patterns of them) is ever a sufficient or necessary condition of anything as complex as "does this person like me?" or "is this person nervous?".

I'm not saying people actually act like this, but... okay, let's face it, some people will. In the face of little behavioral and people-reading tips like the ones here, there are going to be people who allow those bits of trivia to override other common sense, reasoning, and intuition. Learning about human reflexes and impression can certainly help, but they aren't total universal truths. Yeah, there are some gross similarities in how people act and react, but trying to judge and read people using only knowledge of those similarities, comparing their expression to some laundry list of "X means Y" comes off as extremely ridiculous. It's extremely distancing (ironically enough), the research is still young and controversial to begin with, and the variations and nuance of human interaction (and human personality) are so vast that it's foolish to apply some set of quasi-scientific "rules" to all interaction, especially since most actual emotional "reading" is done not by reading individual behaviors, but patterns of behavior, including the context in which they are done, and through a knowledge of the person involved. Yeah, it's nice to know things like "using distancing language makes a person seem insincere" and "a person fidgeting with their hands a lot seems restless", but those tips are only useful when applied to a more natural, holistic, and personalized understanding of how people operate.

[KaelGotDwarves]

G-flex. You know what. I agree with you. 100%

But we're also in a thread full of people with Asperger's Disorder and for them as well as those of us who are just plain terrible at body language, learning some cues on how to read people and act in social situations may be a big gain. I won't pretend to fully understand as I don't have the disorder myself.

For those that read social situations in a quite alien manner to us, I figure knowing some of these guidelines would help, and that's why I posted them. They do work, in a general sense.

[MorleyDev]

Certain expressions, gestures and the like correlate certain emotional states. Some of these encoded by genetics, and some which are culturally bound.

People often make what is known as an Othello error. Othello believed that the fear he was seeing in his wife was that of a woman caught in an affair, when really she simply feared that he would think her unfaithful. If you see the signs of fear, that just means the person is afraid. You have to consider all the possibilities as to why they would be afraid. Likewise a person may feel guilty as they confess the truth, or they may briefly remember a similar situation where they were guilty, so a sign of guilt does not mean that the specific statement is false.

[G-Flex]

G-flex. You know what. I agree with you. 100%

But we're also in a thread full of people with Asperger's Disorder and for them as well as those of us who are just plain terrible at body language, learning some cues on how to read people and act in social situations may be a big gain. I won't pretend to fully understand as I don't have the disorder myself.

For those that read social situations in a quite alien manner to us, I figure knowing some of these guidelines would help, and that's why I posted them. They do work, in a general sense.

Yeah, I'm talking less about use and more about abuse of them. I'm aware nobody in this thread seems to be advocating that kind of behavior so far, but it's certain that some people would take it that way. It's sort of the difference between people being given general "dating tips" and people reading pick-up-artist manuals that tell you to use your GM style to neg the HB to peak your zazz meter so you can do your special kino attack and f-close the target. Social interaction never relies on simple rules, scripts, over-generalizations, or (worst of all) artificially-crafted techniques that are so far removed from how you would naturally and sincerely act that they come off as sociopathic, in the case of the pick-up-artist junk I'm using as an analogy.

If you see the signs of fear, that just means the person is afraid. You have to consider all the possibilities as to why they would be afraid. Likewise a person may feel guilty as they confess the truth, or they may briefly remember a similar situation where they were guilty, so a sign of guilt does not mean that the specific statement is false.

Nor do all the same signs apply to everyone in the same way. A lot of people fidget in certain ways when they're nervous about something, or particularly restless. Other people just do it out of habit or a personal quirk. Also, as I mentioned, individual "signs" are less important than the overall pattern a person is exhibiting, within both the context of the situation and the context of their usual behavior patterns. I think probably all of us have had cases where we've read someone completely the wrong way simply because we aren't familiar with their style of communication or behavior, or because we try to apply too many of the same rules across the board, or judge too much based on past experiences.

[KaelGotDwarves]

PUA crap is for a particular specific purpose and isn't scientifically grounded... maybe some would argue, but honestly... fuck those guys.

I do agree on relying on generalisations as a crutch is bad versus using them as a tool, but got to start somewhere.

[G-Flex]

PUA crap is for a particular specific purpose and isn't scientifically grounded... maybe some would argue, but honestly... fuck those guys.

Yeah, I'm just using it as an analogy to make clearer the point that general tips and guidelines work as a way to improve one's understanding of social interaction, but are never to be taken as absolute fact and still must be part of a more holistic and contextually-relevant and personalized (and, for that matter, natural/sincere) approach.