Can You Read A Person?

Questingpoet

Questingpoet

Not Afraid to Use His Beard
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INFJ
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Pulled this idea from another thread. Typically, it's said and believed that INJF's can READ people well. We have inner insights due to our Ni that give us advantages in figuring people out faster and more correctly than other types would use different funtions to "figure out" people. So topics for discussion here would be:


* As an INFJ, do you think your Ni helps you in figuring out what a person is and what makes them tick quicker?

* If you are not an INFJ, do you think this is a true statement on INFJ's and the nature of Ni?

*What other types are good with figuring people out? What other functions aid in this (such as Ti)?

* Is this something that's not really related to type, and that just gets easier with age?



I'll chime in with my opinions later on. Thoughts?
 
* As an INFJ, do you think your Ni helps you in figuring out what a person is and what makes them tick quicker?
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Quicker? no, Ni takes time to work, if anything it makes it take longer because I know I tend to need prolonged exposure to someone before I can see them and feel them inside my head. I would say Ni gives an advantage in making things clearer/more accurate. But at the cost of time. If anything I think Sensors would have the speed advantage in figuring people out because they look for more linear lines of reasoning and come to conclusions faster based on what is there in front of them as opposed to what they know of them off hand. I have had the wool pulled over my eyes in the past a few times by people who were shady, I got a queasy feeling that I was being screwed, but I couldnt pinpoint it because I didnt know them, I was just assessing the situation. Once I knew them though I could see everything they were "trying" to do.


*What other types are good with figuring people out? What other functions aid in this (such as Ti)?
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I have found ISFP's to be pretty good with figuring out people based on their motives. I also know an ENTJ who is good at figuring people out, but he is often off the mark, but close. I wouldnt call it figuring people out though so much as pushing peoples buttons to see how they tick to learn their reactions, whereas the ISFP was more like the INFJ was of observing and learning via discussion as opposed to experimentation.

* Is this something that's not really related to type, and that just gets easier with age?
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Who knows, I was always pretty good at guessing the motives of people I interacted with based on the scenario/situation. Not so much just reading them as they talk or whatever, I had to have some form of interaction with them and see how they interact with their environment and learn about them via discussion to model them accurately in my head.
 
Not an INFJ but an INTJ, so no insight into how you Feelers are...<hehe>
However, my Ni is very, very, very, very good and I read people well. I think my Te helps me order my perceptions very fast. The combination of these 2 aspects and the fact that I find figuring out emotions interesting have helped develop this talent. If I hang around someone a few times I usually have a pretty accurate handle on them. I find the most difficult part is to keep my insights to myself because not many people are comfortable with the knowledge that someone can have such insight into their issues and motivations. I try and only use my Ni for good.....
 
* If you are not an INFJ, do you think this is a true statement on INFJ's and the nature of Ni?

yeah infjs do seem good at reading people's true intentions, i think intjs have a similar ability. i'm no good at it though, my instincts about people have been wrong in the past so i try not to rely on them too much.
 
Question: What do we mean when we say we "read" someone? I'm asking because person A can see some aspects of someone clearly and almost immediately without knowing them very well, while Person B can read other things not observed by Person A.

Some can see motives for acting or behaving in a particular situation which makes the reading or knowing contextual, while others can see the spirit of the person as a whole, without necessarily becoming aware of how that person will behave in a particular situation.
 
I'd think INFJs would tend to be higher-up in the types of people that would be able to read others well.

But I think it has more to do with tuning into the feelings of others. I think any person, if motivated, could learn to read people well, it's just that IxFx's would probably do this more often.
 
sometimes i can tell immediately what someone is "really" like while other people around sometimes don't seem to be able to, and i find out that i'm right later when they act in ways that match what i thought. i think i have a very good sense for when someone is not "genuine".
 
Billy said:
Quicker? no, Ni takes time to work, if anything it makes it take longer because I know I tend to need prolonged exposure to someone before I can see them and feel them inside my head. I would say Ni gives an advantage in making things clearer/more accurate. But at the cost of time.
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Very good points Billy. That all makes sense, though I would say Ni can work at different speeds given the person using it and the situation. I think mine works quickly in accessing people (which is primarily what we are talking about here). I say this because I learned time and again as a younger person that the impression I got of someone in the first 5-10 minutes was right almost all the time. I couldn't always pinpoint WHY they felt how they did to me, but it was accurate in a short amount of time.

I very much agree with you on taking longer with regards to problem solving. Sometime, yes the eureka moment. But usually it take a key fact or two to make things go "click". And as is the nature of Ni, these key facts can seem random or unimportant to some types. Sometime these can come early, other times much later. It can be hard to decide without the click.

Sonyab said:
I try and only use my Ni for good.....
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and the world thanks you for it! ;)

Anita said:
Question: What do we mean when we say we "read" someone? .
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That's subjective. What I mean is how quickly can you size them up accurately. Figure out how they are going to behave. Perhaps even what their motivations are.

KazeCraven said:
I'd think INFJs would tend to be higher-up in the types of people that would be able to read others well.

But I think it has more to do with tuning into the feelings of others. I think any person, if motivated, could learn to read people well, it's just that IxFx's would probably do this more often.
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Nice. I agree. The combination of Fe and Ni makes us more intuitive experts on feelings and people motivations (which are often based on feelings) with regards to those feelings I would think. Other types are probably more intuitively in tune with things like problem solving or perhaps painting.
 
I'm also an INTJ and I couldn't agree with you more. Usually by my 2nd time around a person I have them nailed, but like yourself, will keep my insight to myself unless otherwise asked.
 
I can READ almost infallibly (to the point of freaking people out sometimes) that something is up... I can't necessarily read WHAT is up; there, my imagination gets a bit overboard and I can assume worse than is reality
 
PoetessK said:
I'm also an INTJ and I couldn't agree with you more. Usually by my 2nd time around a person I have them nailed, but like yourself, will keep my insight to myself unless otherwise asked.
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Yes, INFJ's and INTJ's both have Ni as their dominant function. That's one reason we get along well with each other. However INFJ's filter their Ni though Fe, while INTJ's filter it through Te so the nature of our Ni's is a bit different. That's what I was illuding to earlier in this thread. I tend to keep my insight to myself also.
 
If I was unable to read people I would not be able to navigate in the social world like I do. It is a cornerstone to my personality, and people frequently tell me that I am very good at it. I am by no means perfect, but the vast majority of the time it is extremely helpful and useful for me. I really just kind of sum it up like this "people make sense". I more or less just understand people and how they work.
 
Not sure i can read people well. In the past, there were things that i learned about people which i didn't think was insight but later on, i was proven right so to speak. But i miss the most obvious things that is obvious to everyone else.

think when i actively try to read someone, i usually suck at it, but when i happen to learn something about someone by being around them or noticing things without even trying, it's sometimes spot on. So, i guess it depends. I think some of what i see i assume is probably already obvious or apparent to most, and isn't anything really "deep" or new or different from what everyone already knows or has observed.

I think this is why I like the Ni analyses of people, avatars, etc. because i'm always trying to see how true or false my impressions are or how accurate is my intuition.
 
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I can read people, but sometimes I don't want to read them because it tires me.

* As an INFJ, do you think your Ni helps you in figuring out what a person is and what makes them tick quicker?

I usually take actions into account first, and then let Ni work it out. Ni is automatic, though, and sometimes it frustrates me because I know my conclusion about a person is correct, even though I don't want to believe it. You know how it is; actions/speech and personality don't line up, so Ni begins rooting around for the actual motive and the "why" answer.

*What other types are good with figuring people out? What other functions aid in this (such as Ti)?

INTJ, I'm sure because of the Ni, but I'd say any type with Ni within their first four functions is fairly decent at it (this would include: ESTP, ESFP, ENTJ, ISTP,ENFJ, and ISFP).

* Is this something that's not really related to type, and that just gets easier with age?

I think it depends. I think anyone can "read" people, but it may take time to learn the skill, and there will always be folks who are a bit more adept at it than others, regardless of age.
 
I can read people very well but not necessarily tell if somebody is lying. In that sense, I can tell if somebody is a "good" person (by my indefineable measure) or a "bad" person, but sometimes my good friends have tricked me for fun and I completely fall for it. It does take some time though. I used to be a good target for con artists with sob stories because I felt bad in case they actually were in trouble. Eventually, I realized that virtually everyone asking for money was a con artist and stopped giving in.
 
INFJ but I'd say the Ni is what's key regardless of type. Can I "read" them faster? That depends on the person. Some people I can read like a book after a few minutes (usually the ESxx types).

Others I wouldn't say I "read" so much as "detect" something about them that tells me what I need to know. After a few weeks with them I get a better picture.
 
I would say I can read people instantly and usually pretty well. I can smell disingenuity before it's even spoken. For years, friends and girlfriends would be annoyed with me for taking an instant dislike to certain people, and then it would turn out sometime later that my instincts were right. (On top of all that, I like to judge a person by their shoes. You really can tell a lot about what kind of person they are.)

I trust my intuition so much now I've recently taken to telling apart sensors from intuitives and typing people in real time which is great fun, and acceptedly, far from accurate, and impossible with some people. But I find it helpful when dealing with different sorts of folk, especially female ISTJs, who for some reason (well, it's obvious really), I almost always bang heads with, usually due to my freewheeling, multiple-assocation, vast canvass conversation style haha.
 
I could read people pretty well but had no idea why or how. recently, I've started reading more body language books and have increased my ability to read by a lot.
 
People have said I am quite intuitive but we also run the risk of reading into things too much - the spanner is really thrown into the works when people lie! This really winds me up especially when I'm sure it's not the truth but you have to believe in your instincts especially as I believe it's a big part of what drives INFJs
 
*no, not particularly
*n/a
*any N type really i think. though, any type can be good at it..
* to some extent, yes.
 
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