Beware of your gut feelings, they may betray you

By Lionel Wijesiri

What do you make of your new neighbour who’s married, has children, dresses neat daily, rarely misses a day of work, has a well-groomed garden and a tidy home, is friendly and polite, always asks about your day and your children, and even looks after your home when you’re out of town for a few days? You would think this is the best neighbour in the lane.

What if someone warns you saying that this very neighbour “is a very dangerous criminal wanted in a number of cases of sexual assaults.” This is what exactly Mary Ellen O’Toole tells us in her book Dangerous Instincts: How gut instincts betray us. O’Toole, a retired FBI agent, worked in the case and interviewed the 60-year-old park ranger David Parker Ray, who appeared charming and even courteous towards young women. As it turned out, he’d been torturing women for years, and none of his neighbours ever suspected him to be anything but a “nice guy.”

As one of the world’s top experts on psychopathy and criminal behaviour, Mary Ellen O’ Toole has seen repeatedly how relying on the sense of fear alone often fails to protect us from danger. Whether you are opening the door to a stranger or a person you are connected with online, you need to know how to protect yourself from harm-physical, financial, legal, and professional.

Snapshot

When we meet a person for the first time, we are usually unaware of it but most of us have taken an assessment test report of him or her within the first few minutes of the encounter. Some people even claim to have a special gift for instantaneously assessing people whom they meet. As dramatic as it may sound, there lies some truth to it.

People whose livelihoods subject them to being in constant contact with other people such as waiters, salespersons, medical doctors naturally develop the skills for “sizing people up at a glance.” It deals with understanding the mechanics and philosophy involved; for instance, studying the cold truth about mannerisms and their meanings, facial expressions and body language, determining what a certain tone of voice may insinuate, or how the circumstances of a person’s environment may influence their behaviour.

Unquestionably, this demonstrates that “reading people” is just as much of an art as it is science. But a person doesn’t have to be a psychic or possess any extrasensory abilities to do so.

See what O’Toole says: “When we try to determine whether someone is a good person or a potential threat, we tend to focus on superficial qualities that actually don’t tell us much about the individual. We assume that people who go to work every day, have a family and a well-kept home are normal - and we give them a lot of credibility.”

We also assume that we’ll experience the sensations of fear when we’re around someone dangerous and know to stay away. O’Toole says, dangerous people have a way of making us feel very comfortable. For instance, they’re friendly and courteous and make good eye contact. When O’Toole first saw David Parker, he took her hand and told her how nice it was to meet her. He also was polite and well-mannered. Even O’Toole, who’s worked on hundreds of the most notorious criminal cases, had to keep reminding herself of his heinous crimes.

Behaviour

According to O’Toole, the best way to tell if someone is dangerous is by observing their behaviour. To be a good reader of behaviour, you have to watch and listen. But if you’re too busy talking the whole time, you may miss key pieces of information.”

We also tend to admire and even get intimidated by people in certain professions and positions, which additionally hampers our judgment. O’Toole calls this “icon-intimidation.” We assign admirable qualities to them without much thought. We assume they’re intelligent, compassionate and thereby harmless.

Reading people accurately means going beyond superficial traits and observing their behaviours. According to O’Toole, these are several red flags of concerning or dangerous actions.

(1) They anger easily or talk about violence. For instance, if a person has road rage, it’s a good indicator that they also have anger problems outside the car. Another red flag is if they think that “violence is the answer to everything no matter what they’re talking about.”

They tend to blame others. Let’s say you’re on your first or second meeting with a person, and he mentions of his past relationships. He doesn’t have anything good to say. He lacks empathy or compassion. Such lack of empathy and compassion are important indicators of someone’s character and his dangerousness.

Principles

O’Toole’s advice is further enhanced by Aiyana Rayne, a behavioural expert, in her major contribution “The Art of Reading People.” She says: There are basic principles when it comes to reading people.

They all rely on your ability to put them into practice, subsequently backing your analysis up with your own experience and intuition to come to a final conclusion.

Establish a baseline. When you begin to read a person, start off by studying his behaviour.

Compare the way he is acting at the particular moment to his usual manner. Observe if he is in a comfortable state; in a familiar environment, surrounded by those he knows and is completely comfortable with. If so, he is in his baseline state, which is the standard from which you will go by to make your assumptions.

Patience is essential. Time is the only sure way that you will learn a person’s normal behaviour. Practise on people that you already know; trying to discover their baseline should be easy, providing that you already know how they normally act.

Consider the whole picture to recognise patterns. It is important that you learn how to filter out the things that aren’t so important so that the more significant information is brought to the forefront. Look for certain patterns or gestures that coincide with specific behaviours.

Observe the “whole” picture (you cannot correctly analyse a person until you broaden your view); one or two traits by themselves hardly ever tell a person’s complete story.

Expanding your views to see the entire picture is extremely important because it isn’t until you learn to see in patterns that you will start to “see” things consistently and the true person will be revealed to you.

Combining your first impressions with provided information, their behaviour, tone of voice and environment should pretty much tell you all you need to know about a person.

The bottom line of the story is that reading people accurately isn’t a gift; it’s a skill that you can master if you start paying attention to the right things.