Have you ever wanted to read someone’s mind? In the George Orwell classic “1984″ a world of control is depicted where thought police can read your most private thoughts and the telescreens keep an eye on our every public move.
Clearly the book was a work of fiction, but physical and psychological indicators are present in every reaction a human ever makes.
Learn enough about a person and their reactions, and you can determine what they are thinking with astounding accuracy.
The goal may be to find someone’s “core need” to identify the motivating factor(s) behind their intention, regardless of what they may be “telling you” verbally. It’s broken down into 2 parts.
Let’s Start By Taking A Look At Physical Reactions
In poker for example, there are patterns and predictable aspects to how people react to specific situations. They’re called tells.
One important aspect to successfully reading someone is to get a base reading then observe their natural reactions to predictable events to determine a probable outcome for future events.
If I was trying to get a read on someone in a game of texas holdem for example, I may start by getting a line on how they play Ace King or pocket pairs above JJ. Based on that information, I’ll gain an understanding their thinking behind how they not only play specific hands but also how they approach the game in general.
Do they always raise with an ace but fold after the flop if they miss? Will they chase? Will they bluff? Can they be bluffed? That’s all valuable information and each person is different, but they often react in the same way (not considering reverse-psychology levels present in higher limit play).
Watch this Judge’s Game scene from “Rounders”, it’s a great example of the power of physical tells.
Combining physical and psychological tells to see through peoples lies
Have you ever had a feeling someone wasn’t being honest with you, but you just couldn’t get a read on the situation. Their words and body language are telling you one thing, but you think the opposite may be true?
Asking questions and observing reactions is a great way to get more information, but what else are we looking for? The eyes are the path to a person’s soul, and while a person may be able to control their body language the eyes are much harder to control.
The term NLP, or “Neuro-Linguistic Programming” refers to a stated connection between the neurological processes (“neuro”), language (“linguistic”) and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience (“programming”) and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life. – Wikipedia
In this demonstration by the creators of NLP, people are asked a series of 10 questions and their reactions are mapped to 6 areas of emotion around their head.
In nearly every case, the direction of the persons eyes seems to correlate to what area of emotion they are using to formulate their answer. Watch as their eyes reveal the movement of thought.
It’s interesting to note the differences in emotional range as they relate to the current state of the subject. Combined with some basic cold-reading about each person, one could start to formulate an idea of what these people are “thinking” just by studing their reactions.
NLP was initially created in the 1970’s by Richard Bandler a student of mathmatics and therapy and John Grinder, a Professor of Liguistics.
Here’s another video of Tony Robbins demonstrating NLP techniques on a women with a gambling problem. Watch the first 57 seconds then pause the video and see if you can apply the technique from the previous video to get a better idea of her core need – Then watch her transformation as Tony uses NLP techniques to instantly affect change in her outlook.
I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment below and let me know what you thought of this post, I can’t read minds after all… or can I?
