people is to be curious. Even better is to provide yourself with some sort of external gain or loss that motivates you.

What is closeness? Closeness is when your vision of your “self” scooches over and makes room for someone else to be in there too.

Truth be told, if you wanted to focus on something, skip body language and laser focus on their speech. When we can hear someone but not see them, empathic ability declines only about 4 percent. When we can see someone but not hear them, the drop-off is a whopping 54 percent. Pay less attention to whether they cross their legs and more attention to

give people a second chance.

People turn to crystal balls and tarot cards not for hard answers but for a story that gives them a feeling of control over their lives.

readability is more important than reading skills. People-reading skills aren’t that variable,

“The Barnum effect refers to the tendency for people to accept as uncannily descriptive of themselves the same generally worded assessment as long as they believe it was written specifically for them on the basis of some ‘diagnostic’ instrument such as a horoscope or personality inventory.”

Instead of focusing on not judging a book by its cover, it would be more useful to say we would be better off putting more effort into revising the judgments we will undoubtedly make.

If it scares you, say it. You don’t need to go full bore just yet.