Surely you've wanted to know hundreds of times what someone was thinking. Knowing what a person thinks is an advantage to:
- Better understand people
- Attract whom you love
- To sell
- Be competitive as an employee or employer
- Prevent taking advantage of you
- Deliver to criminals
- And much more…
Learn how to read the mind Of people, men or women, is not something magical, although the conclusions reached must be taken with caution.
In general, the more experience you have and the more observant and curious you are, the more you will succeed in reading the thoughts of others.
On the other hand, reading the mind is not knowing the exact content of what someone thinks. Unless you have a developed sixth sense-telepathy-you will not hear someone's voice in your head.
It is about observing the behavior of people and inferring how they feel, their emotions, in what State of mind They are and what they may be thinking.
In addition, the context will also be important. Depending on the situation, some thoughts are more likely than others.
I'll explain several tricks out of research I've found. I even compiled several tips given by Jack Shafer, an FBI agent!
In principle, its effectiveness is proven scientifically, although as I said before, it is difficult to draw conclusions and you have to take into account the experience and the context.
You read the mind, even if you do not know
Whether you know it or not, you already have certain abilities to know what others think, that they will think or predict behaviors.
Without the ability to know the feelings or thoughts of other people, we would be unable to handle social situations or establish personal relationships with others.
In fact, The theory of mind Is a skill that begins to develop from the age of 3-4 and refers to the ability to attribute thoughts and intentions to other people.
When a person has developed this ability, he can understand and reflect on personal and other mental states.
According to researcher William Ickes of the University of Texas, strangers can"read"each other with a precision of 20%, and friends and couples with a precision of 35%. The people who have most developed this capacity reach up to 60%.
How to Learn to Read the Mind
1-Start by knowing yourself
If you do not know yourself how will you know how others are?
Knowing what others think or feel is not a one-way process, but something dynamic.
To begin, you need to know how you feel in each moment, your inner state; What is known as Interoception .
The more aware you are of yourself, the more you recognize your mood.
And that mood may be caused by you or by your interlocutor.
Negative emotions are transmitted much more than positive emotions and this is a way of knowing how you feel with who you are talking to.
Have you talked to someone who has transmitted you"good vibes"? Have you talked to someone who has transmitted you stress or negative emotions?
It's because of emotional contagion.
The more you know your state of mind, the better you will know that of others.
Something that can help you is the Mindfulness or the meditation , Techniques that allow you to know your"inner world".
To finish this section, remember that you will not know what the other person thinks without interacting, that would be parapsychology.
Therefore, you will have to interact by participating. In this case, there are forms that are more positive than others:
- Well: You seem to feel a little sad about this. I'm wrong?
- Bad: I know what you think / I know how you feel.
2-Read the lips
This section of the lips is due to the experience of FBI agent Jack Shafer.
Palsy
Pursing your lips slightly is a gesture that indicates that your interlocutor disagrees.
The more intense it is, the greater the disagreement.
Puckered lips mean that the person has formed a thought that is in opposition to what is being said or done.
If for example you are trying to convince someone, a trick is to"change your mind"before you have the opportunity to verbally articulate your opposition.
When a person expresses high opinion, changing their opinion is very difficult because of the psychological principle known as consistency.
Maintaining a position causes much less psychological stress than making decisions continuously, whatever the arguments.
Lip biting
Another way to"read the mind"is to observe when your interlocutor bites his lips.
It consists of a soft bite of the lower lip or upper lip.
This gesture means that the person wants to say something, although he does not dare; People usually do not say what they think because they think they will offend others.
Knowing what your partner or friends do not dare say will allow you to communicate more effectively.
One way is by declaring Empathic form What you think causes you anxiety .
For example:
- You: Then you think we should spend more time together
- He / she: No, I would like you to help me more in the house
Press your lips
This occurs when the upper and lower lip come together, sealing the mouth and obscuring the lips.
This compression has a meaning to biting the lips, although it has a more negative meaning.
Someone wants to say something, but presses his lips to avoid saying it.
You can encourage a crime suspect to testify with a simple empathic statement:
"So you have something to say, but you do not want to talk about it."
Some tricks of this section:
- If you see puckered lips,"change the mind"of the person before he articulates his objections
- If you see bitten or pressed lips, use an empathic statement to find out why the person is anxious about what you are saying.
3-Work Empathy
If you are using your brain to think about the future, the past or your problems, you are not connecting with the emotions of other people.
Suprimes Your empathy , Ie how your mind reads the emotions of other people. And you have the ability, even if you do not pay attention.
According to Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan, current college students show 40% less empathy than those of the 1980s and 1990s.
However, although empathy may be forgotten, anyone has the ability to develop it and put it into practice.
Your brain Is empathic; You have neurons called" Mirror neurons "That are activated when another person you observe performs an action.
In addition to socializing, these neurons have an important role to connect with the emotions and intentions of other people.
Has it occurred to you that you are walking down the street, you find someone and when trying to get you decided to go in the same direction, blocking the way?
This is because your mirror neurons mimic the behavior of the other person, until your brain can process the information and perform the opposite movement.
According to Christian Keysers of the University of Croningen, when you see a spider crawling up the leg of something, you feel a sense of fear or disgust.
Similarly, when you notice that your football or basketball team loses or wins, you feel their emotions, as if you were there.
Social Emotions as guilt, Shame, disgust, pride or lust can be experienced by observing others.
To increase your empathy, follow these steps:
- Live in the present : The more quiet your brain (of thoughts about the past or future), the more you can hear your emotions and those of the other person. Meditation is good practice. Practice observing people and the environment without thinking about other things.
- Watch and Listen : You can watch movies that tell dramatic or humorous stories of people. Being absorbed in another's life strengthens the connections of your emotional brain. Even better is in a theater. However, the best way is to stay with acquaintances, friends or family and listen face to face, without interference, paying attention.
- Ask yourself what you are feeling : Practicing the awareness you have of yourself will improve what you have over others. This requires you to ask yourself what you are feeling. Stand 3-4 times a day and ask yourself: how do I feel? What emotion do I have right now? Also, find out in which areas of the body you feel the emotions. For example, if you have anxiety or fear, where do you feel them? on the chest? arms? neck?
- Test Your Instinct : If you are talking to someone, tell them the emotions you are experiencing or try to find out what they are experiencing. For example, if you see that your friend is animated, say:"you look very animated, has something good happened to you eh?". Always tactful and much more if you think you are sad or discouraged.
3-Eye Contact
The sight is the most important sense in the human being.
So much is the importance of the eyes to interact with other people, according to a University of Miami study, 43.4% of the attention we give to another person, focuses on their eyes.
From the eyes of a person you can infer what is thinking or plotting. In this article You can learn more about this topic.
To blink
Emotions towards another person can alter the frequency of blinking.
Blinking more than 6 to 10 times a minute can be a sign that that person is attracted to the caller.
Also, blinking more may indicate that the person is feeling nervous.
Since 1980, in the presidential debates, the person who has blinked the most has lost.
Raise eyebrows
People raise their eyebrows when they want to make themselves understood better.
He also notes sympathy, empathy and desire to get along with the other person.
Squinting
Squinting means suspicion or disbelief and is a gesture that is often unconscious.
Direction of the look
From the direction in which the eyes look, much has been written since the NLP .
According to this model of communication, looking to the left indicates that something is being remembered.
On the other hand, looking to the right indicates that you are generating thoughts or images, which some interpret as being lying, although I would take it with great caution.
Note: left-handed people are the other way around.
Pupils
Eckhard Hess found in 1975 that the pupils dilate when a person is interested in someone.
Also, the pupils contract when we perceive situations that disgust us. Dilation: The size of the pupil grows. Contraction: the size of the pupil decreases.
"The more difficult a mental activity, the more dilated the pupils. However, if mental activity is too much, the pupils contract.
- They dilate when we experience pain.
Seduction
In flirtations and seduction there seems to be a consensus that:
-If you initiate the contact and the other person does not respond, you may not be interested.
If you watch her after he / she looks away or refuses to look, you will make her uncomfortable.
-If you initiate eye contact, the other person will probably feel welcome and respond positively.
- The boys can take into account the following: 1) if a girl looks you in the eyes, then looks down and finally returns to your eyes, surely this interested, 2) if you break the eye contact and look to the side, not There is nothing safe and 3) if you look up after making eye contact, you probably are not interested.
-For girls who want to seduce with the look: a man needs to average three looks of a girl to begin to realize that he feels interested.
Dominance
People who are rich, high status or who want to show superiority, tend to maintain less eye contact.
Looking elsewhere in a conversation is another way of expressing superiority.
Avoid contact with eyes
Avoiding looking into another person's eyes may be a sign of feeling ashamed for some reason
Also, avoiding contact with another person often means being angry with her
Blinking may indicate that the person is feeling nervous. Since 1980, in the presidential debates, the person who has blinked the most has lost.
Emotions towards another person can alter the frequency of blinking. Blinking more than 6 to 10 times a minute can be a sign that that person is attracted to his or her interlocutor
You also have to keep in mind, that the contact time depends on the culture. For example, in New York 1.68 seconds is perceived as an acceptable time.
Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is a test developed by the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge with which you can improve your ability to"read minds."
Can Do here The test.
4-Other non-verbal language cues
Did you know that the 93% of the Effectiveness in communication Is determined by non-verbal language?
The influence and impact of our communication is determined by:
- 55% nonverbal language
- 38% paralinguistic elements.
- 7% verbal content
Here are some things to keep in mind about this topic:
- Touching your nose and covering your mouth : According to this signal, people would tend to cover their mouths and touch their noses while lying. It could be due to an increase of epinephrine in the capillaries of the nose. On the other hand, putting your hands close to your mouth would aim to cover the lies.
- Restlessness : It is when a person looks for something around his something or his body moves restlessly. It is assumed that by telling a lie, anxiety would arise that would be released with physical movements, compulsively touching a part of the body, etc. It is a question of observing if the behavior is different from how the person normally behaves.
- Talk slow : When telling a lie, the person could pause while talking to find what to say.
- Throat : A person who lies may constantly swallow.
- The expression is limited to the mouth : When someone mistakes emotions (happiness, surprise, sadness...) moves only the mouth instead of the whole face: jaw, eyes and front.
- Microexpressions : Are facial expressions that show people and are almost imperceptible as they appear in a fraction of a second. Some people can detect them although most do not. In a person who lies, microexpression would be an emotion of stress, characterized by eyebrows up and causing lines of expression on the forehead.
Knowing all the signs of nonverbal language is something very extensive.
If you are interested in expanding information, I recommend these articles:
- How to know if someone lies .
- Non-verbal language tricks .
And what other ways do you know about reading the mind?