The ability to know people is regarded as the most basic ability of a person in any country and in any era. Today many people like to talk about Zeng Guofan, Zeng Guofan’s greatest ability is to be good at knowing people – he selected a large number of powerful ministers for the late Qing Dynasty. It is said that he can give a general idea of a person’s character traits just by looking at him a few times. This is not to promote physiognomy, but to say that through a person’s behavior and living habits, we can get a good idea of what kind of person he is.
Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas in the United States, wrote a book called “The Art of Seeing People”. He found that the things that most people own can reveal information about themselves, especially the following three categories of objects.
The first category is identity tags, which are items that can be used as identification tags.
For example, in the United States, people often judge a person by the car they drive. This is not simply to say that people who drive luxury cars are richer than people who drive ordinary scooter, but that the choice of car among cars with the same price has something to do with the person’s occupation, living habits and openness of mind.
For example, for a new car with the same price of 25,000 to 30,000 US dollars, Americans usually have the following five choices: 1. Buy a car of a traditional American brand such as General Motors or Ford; 2. Buy a car of a Japanese brand, such as Honda and Toyota. Or a similar Korean brand car; 3. Buy a European brand car, such as Volkswagen or Fiat; 4. Buy a low-end off-road vehicle; 5. Buy a pickup, that is, a small truck.
Usually, people who choose American traditional brand cars are more conservative than those who choose Japanese and Korean cars, and the latter usually pay more attention to cost performance and care less about face. However, no matter if you buy an American car or a Japanese or Korean car, you basically only regard the car as a means of transportation, and you are a well-behaved person. People who buy off-road vehicles are in a special situation and can be divided into two categories: young and old. According to the survey, most young people who buy off-road vehicles love to play, and they mainly focus on the power performance of off-road vehicles in the wilderness. The older buyers of off-road vehicles mainly look at the tall off-road vehicles, which are comfortable to sit in and have a good view.
There are still many people in the United States who like pickup trucks with strong cargo capacity. Among them, apart from those purchased for work reasons, most of them are because they like the kind of life that they like to play and go when they want. Especially those who like to camp, usually rent a small RV with a bedroom, kitchen and shower, use a pickup truck, and drive around by themselves; or use a pickup truck to drag their own boat and go to the water’s edge on weekends.
As for those who buy European brand cars, they belong to a small group of people. They like to be different and have more personality. In the United States, European cars are much more expensive than cars of the same grade from other origins, and the maintenance costs are also high. Therefore, unless it is sticking to personality and preferences, Americans will not choose this type of car as the first choice.
It is not difficult to see from the above examples that the things a person uses will reflect his personality characteristics to some extent. So, will someone pretend to be cool and drive a pickup truck to work despite their well-behaved personality? Not likely, because it’s okay to pretend once or twice. After a long time, he will feel uncomfortable because it is not his preferred way of life.
The second category is items that can act as “emotion regulators”.
Many people will put family photos or souvenirs with special meaning in the dormitory or on the workplace. Gosling believes that these items belong to the emotional regulator, which can reflect where the owner’s emotional support is.
In the United States, about 8% of people put family photos in their wallets. Of course, more people today set photos as mobile phone wallpapers. When you see such a person, you can basically infer that he is a person who gets emotional comfort from his family.
The third category is items that leave traces of behavior.
It is written in “The Cases of Sherlock Holmes” that Holmes deduces that the owner of the pocket watch has a habit of drinking from the wear marks on the clockwork of the pocket watch. This kind of plot is not entirely made up by novelists, but has a statistical basis. For example, people who drive more aggressively or are prone to nervousness, the brake pads of the car will wear more severely.
I often pay attention to the appearance of the car in front of me when I drive. According to my observations, those who do not have a high level of driving usually have severe scratches on the body, especially the four corners of the front and rear bumpers and the side doors. Gosling also gave a very interesting example. For example, by observing the garbage a person throws away, one can judge what kind of person he is. This makes sense, just as a doctor would understand a patient’s physical condition by detecting metabolites in the patient’s body.
We can also learn about a person by how he behaves on the Internet. For example, you can roughly judge what kind of person he is through the articles he reposts, the content of Moments, the avatars and nicknames used on social media.
Once we have mastered the basic methods of knowing people, we will be able to “know people, face and heart”. However, is it possible for the observed person to deliberately disguise himself in order to mislead us? It’s hard. The truth can be seen only through long-term observation, not just one or two observations. For example, if a person is usually sloppy, if there are guests coming, he will clean up the house. However, sloppy people don’t clean up their homes every day, even if they do, they only clean up the surface. If you often go to his house, you can pay attention to the back of the furniture and under the table, and you will find the problem.
In addition to spending more time and observing more carefully, you can also examine a person’s behavior from multiple dimensions to see if there are inconsistencies. When a person presents himself frankly, the information you know about him from all dimensions is consistent. For example, a person who really loves to read books will most likely have a bookshelf at home, and he will mention the books he read recently in his conversation, he may also have a library card, and he will go in to look at the bookstore when he passes by… These are all Information of different dimensions, but with consistency. Deliberately camouflaged personal images will always show their feet, especially in daily life, people always have a time to relax, so as to show their true colors.
However, I must point out that no matter what method we use to judge people, it is impossible to be completely accurate. It can only be said that certain details mean that the probability of a certain possibility is greater. If our understanding of a person is originally 50 points, then by paying attention to his behavior and living habits, it is possible to increase our understanding of him to 70 points. But we can’t know a certain person 100%, and there may be reasons behind some details that are beyond our expectations. Therefore, we must also keep in mind, observe more, don’t make comments easily, and don’t easily prejudice people.
