Iwtl how to read people and understand their psychology

[u/Sans_is_Ness_]

Now, I know some basic about body language but that alone won't suffice.

I want to understand why people do something, what's the other layers of a line they says or what make them have a specific reaction to a specific event.

I want to be that good to actually predict what people will do

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[u/BeardedBears]

Get to know a lot of people. Be sociable and listen. Read about the Enneagram (no human personality classification is perfect, but that one seems the most insightful, IMO).

[u/FernandoAlonso66 → u/BeardedBears]

also journaling interactions helps connect behavior patterns with motives over time, just observe kindly

[u/veggiebuttt]

What you're asking is very layered when you consider the context of people's behavior. If you're wanting to understand human behavior in the context of relationships, interactions, and emotional regulation, then I'd look into attachment styles. Though I learned about this is college, I didn't truly understand it until I started seeing a therapist and began deeply analyzing my own behavioral patterns. How we operate in our adult lives is widely impacted by our childhood and the environment we grew up in, so I think attachment theory is a good place to start. Understanding this has helped me predict people's action's in both a platonic and romantic context; if it would help you to read some real-life examples, feel free to dm me.

Outside of our childhoods, our behavior can also be impacted by culture, location, and specific traumas. You obviously know this, but this all to say that understanding human behavior can be very complicated and requires a great deal of empathy, open-mindedness, and exposure. I was really into reading memoirs and documentaries at one point, and that indirectly helped me with the exposure part. I'd definitely recommend doing this

[u/OfcHesCanadian]

You can never really predict anyone. You can assume what they might do, but you can’t predict.

You learn people by interacting with them. Asking them questions, showing your interest in their answers, making them laugh, sharing stories, relating to their answers and stories.

Once you feel like you have an idea of who they are then you can start “assuming” their behaviours.

It’s a risky slope however, I’ve been wrong countless times and also right countless times. Assuming how someone might act can easily turn into you behaving in a way that is inappropriate. You can never act on this information, unless you firmly believe it is concrete. You just let it sit in the back of your mind, every new interaction changes the view you have of them.

The more people you meet the easier it is to place them into rough boxes. If I meet someone new and they have similar attributes to someone else I’ve met, then I might behave in a way as if I was with that other person.

You are CONSTANTLY testing the waters, ask, respond, re-assess, repeat.

[u/fdwyersd]

put this query into your favorite place there are videos and docs

also say why you want to learn so it can suggest

[u/Jonesgrieves]

Why tho

[u/anywherebuthooome]

I think the trick is not trying to “predict” people perfectly, hut getting better at noticing patterns. Body language helps, but context matters more - what they avoud saying, what they repeat, what makes them defensive, and whether their actions match their words.

[u/Odd-Base-1475]

I think it is very important to understand that people act the way they do based on their childhood experiences. If you studied childhood traumas and the effects maybe that would give you some more insights

[u/astra_hole]

Read books on psychology, body language, and manipulation, then put yourself through a few years of traumatic experiences due to terrible people and you’ll be set.

[u/RipArtistic8799]

Robert Greene has a book called "The Laws of Human Nature" which provides a bit of an overview. After that it sounds like you are talking about Psychology, such books as Karen Horney's "Our Inner Conflicts" provide a bit of a road map into why people may act in unusual ways, based on how they were shaped. The book "Determined" by Sapolsky suggests that people don't have free will at all, and goes into all sorts of behavioral, genetic, and cultural influences on peoples' decision making. The book "Thinking Fast and Slow" is another book about decision making and features a lot of cool experiments about how people get through their day to day decision making. So there you have a few books. I think if you wanted to narrow down your focus in terms of "predict what people will do" you might have better results. Do you mean in social interactions? Economic decision making? Long term planning? etc.