This is an article about how to read people using 3 must-haves.
Is it possible to actually read a person, accurately? Don’t people act in ways that deviate from rational from time to time?
Yes, you can read people, but only to a degree.
People have predictable behaviors that make it possible to get a good sense of them. If you pay attention to how someone responds in different situations, you’ll notice a pattern.
Most people tend to stick to their default behaviors unless something throws them off. So, in that sense, yeah, you can get a decent read on someone.
But then, people aren’t always consistent.
We’re influenced by moods and circumstances that can make us act in ways that don’t fit our usual pattern.
Just because you’ve seen someone behave a certain way doesn’t mean they’ll always act like that. Life isn’t that neat.
People change, and sometimes we act in ways that don’t make sense—even to ourselves. Because of that, you can’t always read someone perfectly.
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It’s just not possible to predict everything about how a person will act.
People do things that don’t seem logical all the time. But just because something doesn’t fit your idea of what’s rational doesn’t mean it’s irrational for the person you’re observing.
So yes, you can read people, but not all the time and not always accurately. And people do deviate from what’s rational, but that’s subjective anyway.
What does it take to read a person accurately?
⏲️1 – TIME.
You can’t really predict someone’s moves if you haven’t had the time to watch how they react in all kinds of situations, especially the intense ones.
To truly read someone, you need to observe them over time.
That way, you get to see them under pressure, in unexpected moments, and when they’re caught off guard.
People tend to show their real motivations and limits when they’re stretched, and time gives you the chance to pick up on those patterns.
The longer you watch, the clearer it gets how far they’re willing to go and what really drives them.
Think about how family members, especially in close-knit families, seem to know each other inside out.
It’s not just because they live together—it’s because they’ve seen each other in every possible situation: the highs, the lows, and everything in between.
They know exactly how someone will react when they’re stressed, happy, frustrated, or even when they’re faking it. That’s because they’ve had years of observing patterns, habits, and tells.
When you’ve spent enough time with someone, you can often predict their next move before they even make it.
Families witness each other’s raw, unfiltered moments, so they get an intimate understanding of what makes each person tick.
This is the same principle when it comes to reading someone accurately.
The more you see someone in different circumstances, especially the extreme ones, the better you understand what truly motivates them and what their limits are.
Without time, you can’t get that level of insight.
Think about best friends who’ve been inseparable for years, especially if they’ve known each other since childhood.
They’ve seen each other go through every awkward phase, every triumph, every meltdown. Over time, they learn how the other will react in almost any situation.
They don’t have to guess; they just know.
That’s because they’ve spent years together, seeing how each other really reacts during happy times, tough moments, or even when things get boring.
Best friends can predict what the other will say, how they’ll handle stress, or when they’re hiding something because they’ve picked up on every little cue and pattern over time.
This is exactly why time is crucial when it comes to reading anyone accurately.
The longer you’ve been watching someone, the clearer their motivations and limits become. Like best friends, it takes that depth of time and experience to really accurately read anyone.
👐🏼2 – AN OPEN MIND.
The biggest mistake people make when trying to read others is assuming that their own experiences, emotions, and logic are universal, meaning they project their worldview onto others.
This happens when you interpret someone’s behavior through the lens of your own thoughts and feelings, assuming that others think and act just like you.
The danger here is that it blinds you to the nuances of the other person’s intentions, motivations, and context.
You can’t read a person accurately unless you have a decent degree of emotional intelligence.
Lose any moral superiority you have if you want to read people accurately, because otherwise, your sense of rightetousness will have you dismissing facts for what you want to see instead.
You’ll be making up your own version of events based on your own prinicples rather than your target’s.
Stay curious without letting expectations get in the way
- Pause
Instead of focusing on how a person should react, ask yourself, “What would shock me right now?”
It forces your brain to expect the unexpected and keeps you open to surprises, breaking the rigid hold of your preconceived ideas. It’s a mental twist that forces you to stay engaged and curious.
- Step Back
Try to mentally step back and watch the interaction as if you’re both the observer and the participant. Ask yourself how you’d feel if you were watching this person behave from a third-person perspective.
It shifts your focus away from personal expectations and opens the door for deeper curiosity about why someone is acting the way they are, without being biased by your emotional involvement.
- Resist the urge
When you think someone is about to respond in a predictable way, resist the urge to fill the silence.
Sometimes, waiting in silence longer than normal makes people reveal more than they would have otherwise.
The trick is to expect them to break character or reveal something off-script, keeping you curious about what’s really going on beneath the surface.
- Focus on their contradictions
People are inconsistent, and that’s what makes them interesting. Instead of expecting them to align with your view of them, actively look for contradictions in their words, actions, or body language.
These inconsistencies often tell the deeper story. By focusing on these, you naturally stay opne-minded because you realize people are not one-dimensional.
How to tell if someone is misunderstood or just shady
People who are misunderstood usually struggle to express their real feelings or intentions, but they’re not trying to hide anything important on purpose.
It’s more about how they communicate rather than what they’re keeping secret. They’re not being tricky—they just have a hard time making things clear.
They will often be emotionally transparent, even if they’re awkward or off-putting.
Sketchy people are pretty selective about how they talk—or, honestly, what they leave out.
They pick and choose what to share and what to keep secret, creating holes in the story that just end up making things confusing, usually to dodge responsibility or stay in charge.
They’ll feign ignorance to redirect attention away from the shady behavior. Their emotional responses are often exaggerated or strategically downplayed
- Break down their identity
Rather than seeing someone as a whole (e.g., “my coworker,” “my friend”), try to break down their identity into separate parts—such as their role as a son, their passion for music, or their interest in politics.
This dissection of identity forces you to observe them in layers and keeps you curious, because now you’re looking at different angles of the same person, which prevents the expectation of a singular type of behavior.
- In their shoes
Pretend you are in their shoes right now, not hypothetically. Imagine you’re experiencing their exact emotions, not how you think you’d feel, but how they are likely feeling.
Ask yourself, “What are they dealing with right now that might be influencing their behavior?” This stops you from falling into the trap of thinking that your way of seeing things is the only way.
This helps dissolve expectations since you’re now engaged in their mindset, making their behavior unpredictable and more fascinating to you.
- Pay attention to micro-behaviors, not the obvious
Instead of focusing on what someone says or does, look for the tiny things—like an unexpected twitch in their eyebrow, the way they adjust their posture when certain topics come up, or a brief flash of emotion that disappears in a second.
While their actions might initially seem off, if you look at the bigger picture, you’ll often see a pattern of honesty or good intentions in a person who’s just being misunderstood.
Micro-behaviors are rarely expected, and paying attention to them keeps your openness sharp because they hint at what’s going on beneath the surface.
- Try to picture how they’re reading you right now
Having an open mind about someone grows when you flip the focus on how they are seeing and reading you.
It shifts your mental attention away from your own expectations of them and forces you to think about the interaction from their viewpoint.
Now you’re open not only about what they’re doing but also how they’re processing you in the moment.
💭3 – MEMORY.
When you forget a key piece of information about someone, your brain often engages in a fascinating blend of compensating for the gap while possibly missing the broader context.
It’s not as simple as a memory lapse—there’s a lot more going on under the hood that’s often overlooked.
Ever heard of “cognitive stitching”?
It’s the brain’s way of filling in missing details by stitching together bits of memory, assumptions, and personal biases to create a coherent narrative.
Your brain isn’t just passively forgetting; it’s actively reconstructing the scene.
This reconstruction can be so subtle and convincing that you might not even realize you’ve forgotten something important.
Instead, your mind confidently presents you with a version of events that feels complete but might be slightly off-kilter.
Think of it like how our minds fill in the blanks in a conversation when we didn’t quite catch a word. You don’t stop to panic because one syllable slipped through the cracks; you instinctively fill it in based on context.
Similarly, when you forget a detail about someone, your brain does the same thing—it fills in those gaps using whatever it thinks fits, whether that’s based on past interactions, stereotypes, or assumptions.
You’re not completely missing the bigger picture, but your brain might be creating a different picture, one that feels true but isn’t entirely accurate.
Another deeply unorthodox idea is that forgetting key details about someone can actually amplify emotional resonance over factual accuracy.
Your brain prioritizes feelings over facts in a way most people don’t realize.
So, you might forget where they went to school, their exact job title, or the little details they told you, but your brain remembers how they made you feel.
And that emotional imprint often dictates how you interact with them moving forward.
You may feel closer to someone or more distant based on the emotional cues your brain has stored, rather than the factual details.
In this way, forgetting specifics doesn’t always mean you’re missing the big picture; sometimes, you’re holding onto the essence of a person, which in social contexts, is what your mind deems more crucial.
There’s also “subconscious social shortcuts.” When you forget a piece of information, your brain might take a shortcut, pulling in broader assumptions about how that person fits into your life.
It’s not laziness—it’s efficiency. Your brain decides which details are essential for survival, connection, or maintaining a relationship and prioritizes those over smaller, factual details.
This can lead to moments where you forget their specific story but still maintain the ability to interact meaningfully with them.
You retain a version of them based on your interactions, but the more you rely on these shortcuts, the more the gaps in your understanding could grow.
There’s something almost philosophical about forgetting—a kind of “intentional memory neglect.”
Your brain, consciously or not, might forget key details about someone if those details don’t align with the emotional or social role that person plays in your life.
In other words, it’s not always an accident when you forget something—it could be your brain protecting its version of reality.
If someone told you something that subtly conflicts with how you see them or how they fit into your world, your brain may filter that information out.
You’re not missing the bigger picture; you’re creating the picture that feels more natural to the relationship or interaction.
In this sense, forgetting can be less about failure and more about narrative control—your brain sculpting the story that makes sense to you, even if it means some of the finer details fall away.
So, you’re not necessarily missing out on the bigger picture.
You’re crafting a different one, maybe even a more meaningful one, by letting go of details your brain deems unnecessary for the larger emotional or social arc you share with that person.
