HOW TO READ PEOPLE'S MINDS: 4 EFFECTIVE WAYS - ARTE - 2025

Surely you have wanted to know hundreds of times what someone was thinking. Knowing what a person thinks is an advantage to understand them better, attract someone you like, sell, expose criminals and many other positive and not so positive benefits.

Learning how to read people's minds, men or women, is not something magical, although the conclusions reached should be drawn with caution. In general, the more experience you have and the more observant and curious you are, the more accurate you will be when reading the thoughts of others.

On the other hand, reading minds is not knowing the exact content of what someone thinks. Unless you have a developed sixth sense - telepathy - you are not going to hear someone's voice in your head.

It is about observing people's behavior and inferring how they feel, their emotions, what state of mind they are in and what they may be thinking. Furthermore, the context will also be important. Depending on the situation, some thoughts will be more likely than others.

I am going to explain you several tricks taken from research that I have found. I have even compiled various tips from Jack Shafer, an FBI agent!

In principle, its effectiveness is scientifically proven, although as I have mentioned before, it is difficult to draw conclusions and you have to take into account the experience and the context.

You already read minds, even if you don't know it

Whether you know it or not, you already have certain abilities to know what others think, what they will think or predict behaviors.

Without the ability to know the feelings or thoughts of other people, we would be unable to handle social situations or establish personal relationships with others.

In fact, the theory of mind is a skill that begins to develop after 3-4 years and that refers to the ability to attribute thoughts and intentions to other people.

When a person has developed this ability, they can understand and reflect on personal and other mental states.

According to researcher William Ickes of the University of Texas, strangers can "read" each other with an accuracy of 20%, and friends and partners with an accuracy of 35%. People who have developed this capacity the most reach 60%.

How to learn to read minds

-Start by knowing yourself

If you don't know yourself, how are you going to know what others are like? Knowing what others think or feel is not a one-way process, but something dynamic.

To begin, you need to know how you feel at all times, your inner state; what is known as interoception.

The more self-aware you are, the more you recognize your state of mind. And that state of mind can be caused by you or by your interlocutor.

Negative emotions are transmitted much more than positive ones and this is a way of knowing how you feel who you are talking to.

Have you talked to someone who has given you "good vibes"? or have you talked to someone who has transmitted negative emotions or tension to you?

It's because of the emotional contagion. The more you know your state of mind, the better you will know that of others.

Something that can help you is mindfulness or meditation, techniques that allow you to know your "inner world."

To finish this section, remember that you will not know what the other person thinks without interacting, that would be parapsychology.

Therefore, you will have to interact by participating. In this case, there are ways that are more positive than others:

• Good: You seem to feel somewhat sad about this. I'm wrong?
• Bad: I know what you think / I know how you feel.

-Read lips

This part of the lips is due to the experience of FBI agent Jack Shafer.

Slightly puckering the lips

Slightly pursing your lips is a gesture that indicates that your interlocutor disagrees. The more intense it is, the greater the disagreement.

Pursed lips mean that the person has formed a thought that is in opposition to what is being said or done.

If, for example, you are trying to convince someone, one trick is to "change their mind" before they have a chance to verbally articulate their opposition.

When a person expresses his opinion loudly, changing his opinion is very difficult due to the psychological principle known as consistency.

Holding a position causes much less psychological strain than continually making decisions, whatever the arguments.

Lip biting

Another way to "read minds" is to observe when your interlocutor bites his lip. It consists of a soft bite of the lower or upper lip.

This gesture means that the person wants to say something, although he does not dare; usually people do not say what they think because they think they will offend others.

Knowing what your partner or friends do not dare to say will allow you to communicate more effectively. One way is by empathically stating what you think is causing her anxiety.

For example:

• You: So you think we should spend more time together
• He / she: No, I would like you to help me more at home

Press lips

This occurs when the upper and lower lip meet, sealing the mouth and darkening the lips. This compression has a meaning to that of biting the lips, although it has a more negative meaning.

Someone wants to say something, but presses his lips to avoid saying it. You can encourage a crime suspect to testify with a simple empathetic statement:

So you have something to say, but you don't want to talk about it.

Some tips in this section:

• If you see pursed lips, "change the mind" of the person before he voices his objections
• If you see bitten or pressed lips, use an empathic affirmation to find out why the person is anxious about what you are saying.

-Work empathy

If you are using your brain to think about the future, the past or your problems, you are not connecting with other people's emotions.

You suppress your empathy, that is, how your mind reads the emotions of other people. And you have the ability, even if you don't pay attention to it.

According to Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan, college students today show 40% less empathy than those of 1980 and 1990.

However, although empathy may be forgotten, anyone has the ability to develop and put it into practice.

Your brain is empathetic; you have neurons called "mirror neurons" that fire when another person you are observing performs an action.

In addition to socializing, these neurons play an important role in connecting with the emotions and intentions of other people.

Has it happened to you that you are walking down the street, you meet someone and when you try to move away you decide to go in the same direction, blocking the way?

This is because your mirror neurons mimic the behavior of the other person, until your brain can process the information and perform the opposite movement.

According to Christian Keysers of the University of Croningen, when you see a spider crawling up the leg of something, you feel a sense of fear or disgust.

Similarly, when you watch your soccer or basketball team lose or win, you feel their emotions, as if you were there.

Social emotions such as guilt, shame, disgust, pride, or lust can be experienced when observing others.

To increase your empathy follow these steps:

1. Live in the present: the quieter your brain is (from thoughts about the past or future), the more you can hear your emotions and those of the other person. Meditation is a good practice. Practice observing people and the environment without thinking about other things.
2. Watch and listen: You can watch movies that tell dramatic or humorous stories of people. Being absorbed in the life of another strengthens the connections of your emotional brain. Even better is in a theater. However, the best way is to meet acquaintances, friends or family and listen to each other face to face, without interference, paying full attention.
3. Ask yourself what you are feeling: practicing your awareness of yourself will improve your awareness of others. This requires you to ask yourself what you are feeling. Stand 3-4 times a day and ask yourself: how do I feel? What emotion do I have right now? Also, find out in which areas of the body you feel emotions. For example, if you have anxiety or fear, where do you feel them? on the chest? arms? neck?
4. Test your instincts: if you are talking to someone, tell him / her the emotions you are experiencing or try to find out which ones he / she is experiencing. For example, if you see that your friend is animated, say: "You look very animated, has something good happened to you, huh?" Always with tact and much more if you think he is sad or discouraged.

-Eye contact

Sight is the most important sense in the human being.

So much is the importance of the eyes when interacting with other people, that according to a study by the University of Miami, 43.4% of the attention we pay to another person is focused on their eyes.

From a person's eyes you can infer what they are thinking or up to. In this article you can learn more about this topic.

To blink

Emotions towards another person can alter the frequency of blinking.

Blinking more than 6 to 10 times per minute can be a sign that the person is attracted to the other person.

Also, blinking more can indicate that the person is feeling nervous.

Since 1980, in the presidential debates, the person who has blinked the most has lost.

Raise eyebrows

People raise their eyebrows when they want to make themselves understood better.

It also indicates sympathy, empathy and a desire to get along with the other person.

Squint your eyes

Squinting means suspicion or disbelief and is a gesture that is often unconscious.

Gaze direction

A lot has been written about the direction the eyes look since NLP became known.

According to this communication model, looking to the left indicates that something is being remembered.

On the other hand, looking to the right indicates that thoughts or images are being generated, which some interpret as lying, although I would take it with great caution.

Note: with left-handed people it is the other way around.

Pupils

Eckhard Hess found in 1975 that the pupils dilate when a person is interested in someone.

Likewise, the pupils contract when we perceive situations that we do not like. Dilation: the size of the pupil grows. Contraction: the size of the pupil decreases.

-The more difficult a mental activity is, the more the pupils dilate. However, if the mental activity is too much, the pupils contract.

-They dilate when we experience pain.

Seduction

In flirting and seduction, there seems to be a consensus that:

-If you initiate contact and the other person does not respond, they may not be interested.

If you keep looking at her after he / she looks away or rejects the look, you will make them feel uncomfortable.

-If you initiate eye contact, the other person will probably feel welcome and respond positively.

-Guys can take into account the following: 1) if a girl looks you in the eye, then looks down and finally returns to your eyes, surely she is interested, 2) if she breaks eye contact and looks to the side, no nothing is certain and 3) if she looks up after making eye contact, she is probably not interested.

-For girls who want to seduce with their eyes: a man needs on average three looks from a girl to begin to realize that he is interested.

Dominance

People who are wealthy, high-status, or want to show superiority tend to have less eye contact.

Looking elsewhere in a conversation is another way of expressing superiority.

Avoid eye contact

Avoiding looking into someone else's eyes can be a sign of feeling embarrassed for some reason

Also, avoiding contact with another person often means being angry with them.

Blinking more can indicate that the person is feeling nervous. Since 1980, in the presidential debates, the person who has blinked the most has lost.

Emotions towards another person can alter the frequency of blinking. Blinking more than 6 to 10 times a minute can be a sign that the person is attracted to the other person.

You also have to take into account that the contact time depends on the culture. For example, in New York 1.68 seconds is perceived as an acceptable time.

The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is a test developed by the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge with which you can improve your ability to" read minds.

You can do the test here.

-Other keys to non-verbal language

Did you know that 93% of the effectiveness in human communication is determined by non-verbal language?

The influence and impact of our communication is determined by:

• 55% non-verbal language
• 38% paralinguistic elements.
• 7% verbal content

These are some aspects that you can take into account on this topic:

• Touching the nose and covering the mouth: According to this signal, people would tend to cover their mouths and touch their nose while lying. It could be due to an increase in adrenaline in the capillaries of the nose. On the other hand, putting the hands near the mouth would have the objective of covering the lies.
• Restlessness: it is when a person looks for something around him or her body moves restlessly. It is assumed that when telling a lie, anxiety would be produced that would be released with physical movements, compulsively touching a part of the body, etc. It is about observing if the behavior is different from how the person normally behaves.
• Speak slowly: When telling a lie, the person may pause while speaking to find what to say.
• Throat: a person who lies may swallow constantly.
• The expression is limited to the mouth: when someone falsifies emotions (happiness, surprise, sadness…) they only move their mouth instead of their entire face: jaw, eyes and forehead.
• Micro expressions: these are facial expressions that people show and that are almost imperceptible since they appear in a fraction of a second. Some people can detect them but most cannot. In a person who lies, micro-expression would be an emotion of stress, characterized by raising eyebrows and causing expression lines on the forehead.

Knowing all the signs of non-verbal language is very extensive.

If you are interested in more information, I recommend these articles:

• How to know if someone is lying.
• Non-verbal language tricks.

And what other ways do you know of reading minds?