Why someone’s anxiety or irritability can “infect” a room without a word being spoken.
3. Reading Behavior vs. Overthinking
- Body Language: Posture, gestures, microexpressions — often more reliable than words. For example, a fake smile involves the mouth but not the eyes.
- Tone of Voice & Timing: Hesitation, pitch, or rhythm changes reveal emotional states.
- Consistency: People reveal themselves over patterns, not single moments. Neuroscience shows that repeated behavior is easier for our brain to predict than isolated actions.
4. Emotional Regulation and Self-Understanding
Understanding others is easier if you first understand your own triggers and biases. The brain uses predictive coding: we anticipate others’ actions based on our past experiences, which can be misleading if we haven’t updated our “social model.”
5. Why People Are Hard to Understand
- Different brains process social cues differently. Autism, trauma, or stress can radically change perception.
- People often act in self-protective ways that hide true emotions.
- Social masking is common: hormones like cortisol and testosterone can trigger defensive or dominance behaviors that don’t reflect inner feelings.
