Profiling People easily through visual and verbal clues

• Cold reading skill gives you an idea who this person is. It is a generalization based on stereotyping. It is not the final word on a person, but rather, a contribution to a list of data and information we want to gather from a subject.

• E.g. Wealthy people can dress down and look average. But a poor person will not likely have the means to dress uppity and look wealthy. For that reason, a person who owns a large house, expensive cars, wears luxury brands is likely to be wealthy. These are fair assumptions we can make of people in such a category.

• Again, this is purely generalization and does not consider extreme cases or people who fake their persona.

• In general, majority of people dress up and present their true selves.

• Pick up as many cold reading points as you can. You are likely to be able to make better cold readings in your own environment as you are familiar with your surrounding, demographics and local culture.

• Head shape: Boxy head shape are more leadership type. Roundish head shape are more creative type of personality

• Sinister looking people are usually what their outlook tells you.

• Trust your gut instinct, your first impression may not always be correct, but pay attention to it especially when it is saying “There’s something about this guy that I don’t quite trust.”

Try not to make a quick judgment about the situation immediately. You might just be too quick to judge.

Instead, do this:

1. First, pick out the ‘tells’ or ‘red flags.

2. Then, try to figure out the emotions that these tells are displaying. Identify if they are showing positive, negative or neutral body language.

3. From there, you can dive deeper and make a more accurate read.

Here is a framework to give you a more precise map of where we are.

Profiling:

Reading Personality

- Face Reading

- Cold Reading

- Graphology

Reading Current Emotional State

- Body Language

- Micro Expressions

- Speech Analysis

Reading Medical Condition

- Spot Medical Diagnosis

Stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group – Wikipedia

Distinguish yourself between someone who does careless stereo-typing on a person. As a practitioner, be more a careful and analytical in your approach with these profiling techniques. General stereotyping can still be accurate, but you should strive to be more accurate with the combine skills you are acquiring.

E.g.: When you tell your doctor the symptoms of your medical condition, say you have a headache, fever, runny noise and fatigue. Based on statistical probability, he will say that you have the common flu. He will not likely want to assume that it is a rare disease ( the 1 out of 100,000 people type of disease) without first assuming it is the common flu. In profiling, this is somewhat similar. We make our assumption base on the most probably outcomes.

In order to find out more about a person, you can do some research and gather more information about them.

Social Media platforms like Facebook, Tiktok and Instagram, allows you to retrieve so much about a person’s interest, likes and dislikes. Just read their post or watch their videos, and you will have some idea of who they are and where their interest lies.

People may try to be polite and say the politically correct things…at first

Eventually, people will be true to themselves and will speak from their heart.

This is precisely what you want to know, who the real person is inside.

I have made it easy and categorize people into 6 common domains.

•The speech expresses what is in the person’s heart and mind.

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Here is the list of profile types and some suggestion on how you can respond to them

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•The Pitbull – Don’t go head-on with them.

•The Narcissist – Feed into their ego and you will get along with them. (It is your choice)

•The Coach – Perhaps there could be some wisdom in their advice and could be a learning moment for you.

•The Caregiver – These are the nice people that gets along with people. Give them a bit of encouragement

•The Diplomat – Reciprocate and be diplomatic

•The Deal Maker – Your respond depends if you are in the mood to make a deal.

Keep being curious, keep asking questions.

• Many people don’t ask a direct question to retrieve the information they are seeking.

• Ask direct questions

“Are you likely to purchase this house?”

Instead of “Do you like this house?”

“Is this proposal something you are able to confirm?”

Instead of saying “Do consider my proposal and let me know your decision.”

The direction question will invoke more pressure and the emotional leaks will show up in their body language

After acquiring the different profiling skills, it is time to apply the and put them into practice .

This is the checklist you can use

1. What is the person wearing and how much useful information can you derive from that.

2. What items / props are on them and what does it tell you about that person?

3. Where are you and what is the situational context? Are you in a park or a business setting. Is it a formal or informal setting? Is it tense or relax?

4. Is there anything about his age, ethnicity, facial features, emblems that give you some useful information?

5. What is the body language saying? Is it positive or negative?

6. When you engage the person in a conversation, notice the choice of words. What type of profile is this person? Does he fall into any of the 6 profile types we discussed in the lesson on speech analysis?

7. Never discount your first impression. Pay some attention to your gut feel. Your intuition is picking up signals that your conscious mind has not been taught to define yet.