Extreme Fear

Interesting article! With long term relationships, i think that it's not as much a failure of one person to accurately judge their partner, but a matter of precision. As long as couples are living different lives and experiencing different things, they will change. But if someone becomes comfortable with a certain image of their lover and projects that image onto the actual person over time, then they are no longer accurately reading them.

Another thing that interests me is "love at first sight". How can someone become so irrationally, yet intensely attracted to a person in so little time? I don't know how common it actually is, but it seems to happen quite a lot. But how does this fit in to the evolutionary development of our brains?

For what it's worth, I find that my very first impression tends to be fairly objective and the one I end with. However, after very few seconds pass I begin to project wishes, etc. onto the other person so that I am more likely to buy into their own image management.

There is a saying.. Sometimes the more pieces of puzzle u have, the more harder it is to piece it together. Extra information is not always useful.

Reading people, is something similar. The first impresion we get.. is mostly close to the mark. After that Human interaction which involves a lot of deception and perception - We perceiving what they want, and they deceiving us into thinking what they want.. plays out, and we lost objectivity. The close they are to us emotionally, the harder it becomes to read them accurately.

Hmm.. Maybe...

Prison teacher here, many years of experience have taught me that I can always be fooled one more time. Reasonable prison professionals withhold all final judgements on an inmates intelligence, character, mental illness, etc.

I don't find this argument to be directly opposed to what Gladwell (who was using a lot of Gerd Gigerenzer's work in Blink) was saying. Reading people accurately and very quickly does not mean that we get it right 100% of the time. Even if we're only right 65% of the time, that's still highly accurate in a short period of time. It does not in any way undermine the role of emotional denial, as some other commenters pointed out, nor does it imply that one cannot be fooled.

From my perspective, it is the fact that we are reliable accurate so much of the time that enables our trust in our senses to be so easily exploited by very charming people.

It is emotionally risky to enter into any type of relationship, if you genuinely care. Hard to know what kind of hand you're playing against until the cards are on the table. People lie to get what they want. I've learned to hope for the best while being prepared for the worst, or don't take the chance. Some people don't emotionally invest in relationships. Too hard to figure someone out at a glance. Can have chemistry in the first seconds of meeting only to find out later that there isn't any. The person you know today may be a complete stranger tomorrow.

A first impression is useful only if you know how to use it.

To assume that a charming person is incapable of lying or manipulating under any circumstances is to misunderstand the human species. People do what they have an incentive to do. But our lives require a certain amount of cooperation with others, so we choose to trust when the odds seem to be in our favor.

It could be that some of us (not all) are so poor at sizing up the fellow members of our species because we learned early on the skill of ignoring body language, subtle hostility, manipulative behavior, etc. Any child whose well-being depends on NOT responding to a parent's contradictory signals may quickly bury the instincts that make such insights possible.

James Hillman's book Betrayal suggests that we cannot mature without experiencing betrayal. The lesson we learn is not that "some people cannot be trusted" or that "nobody can assess the intentions of others", but that trust ultimately means understanding people, and all people have limits.

An adult who accepts this idea can operate in the world without irrational fear or undue vulnerability. But ultimately this view requires us to identify our own limits as well. By understanding the circumstances under which we're capable of betraying others, we can better understand when and why others might - or might not - choose to betray us.

"Time and again, it's the person who I really, really like on first meeting who turns out to be an incorrigible rogue."

Looks like you're getting the right signals, but reading them wrong.

Next time you meet someone you "really, really like on first meeting", perhaps you should re-think your feelings a bit more. People have instincts, and their radar works most of the time - but whether the signals are getting interpreted correctly depends on YOU as a person. Like any person, we all have our stereotypes, insecurities, assumptions, bias etc about other people when we meet them.

I guess the trick is to be self-aware. To know yourself - to know that everybody views the world in their own unique, skewed way. Understanding the way your worldview is skewed will help you read people better.

Implicit Personality Theory, its been touched on many times by communications majors. I don't believe people should even dream of taking their "uncanny ability" very seriously. Lets give ourselves some credit here, we're much too complicated to be accurately guessed, much less figured out, based on one moment of our life.

I've heard Oprah say that there's always a "tell" in that first meeting. And, if we're sexually attracted,we almost always (subconciously I guess) decide to ignore it. I'm in my 60s, too many relationships, and when I look back I can put my finger on that "tell," exactly as she suggested. It's never random, it's always important (even said in just a sentence or two) and it always has to do with what goes wrong in the relationship. In a way, it's the beginning of a dishonest relationship because I knew and for some reason, chose to ignore the warning signs.

The body language cult that's been going on for the last few years is incredibly dangerous. There are no short-cuts to truly knowing someone... as your examples demonstrate.

Sure - one can make great guesses with the general rules. But the romantic, legal, business, and other important relationship consequences of incorrect reading are just too great.

There are not only variations from culture to culture - there are variations from class to class, from personality type to personality type, and ultimately from person to person. Few of these differences are currently common knowledge. In any case, they are always just guesses. There's a reason polygraph results are not admissible as evidence in court.

Hey,

STOP!

OPRAH? WELL, if Oprah says 'anything'at all, it just must be true, and factual.
I surrender to the world, all my independent thoughts. How could I have dared in the first place?!!!!

I can easily see the value in both perspectives, as they could both arguably coexist within what has been my own personal experiences.

I have always been careful to distinguish between a first impression and a gut reaction to an individual. While I obviously form an opinion on everyone I meet based on first impression, I've found that anyone whose...presence, if you will, is strong enough to solicit a gut reaction from me is worth watching in some way (I don't have any gut reaction to most people). And of course, the gut reaction is often completely independent of the typical first impression (i.e., people who I have no logical reason to believe aren't charming and considerate have given me a bad gut feeling and vice versa).

Also, I'm not sure if I'm the only one who experiences this, but for some reason my gut reactions to those of the opposite gender tend to be much stronger as well as more accurate. I would like to know there has ever been research on this, because at least from an evolutionary perspective it seems unsurprising that while I can spot a man with bad intentions from a mile away, I confess there have been several occasions where I was completely caught off-guard when close female friends have back-stabbed me. Perhaps people tend to be more in tune with subtle social cues when a potential mate is involved?

Truly it is very interesting for me to read this blog. Thanks for it. I like such themes and anything that is connected to them. I definitely want to read a bit more on that blog soon.