A long-term study of 736 guys showed friends reduced the likelihood of heart problems. Once again, a romantic partner didn’t.

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

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

Since we can’t improve our people-reading skills that much, we have to focus our efforts on making others more readable.

National Academy of Sciences has gone on the record, saying that “the Federal government should not rely on polygraph examinations for screening prospective or current employees to identify spies or other national security risks because the test results are too inaccurate.” With as little as fifteen minutes of training, people have been able to

“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.”

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.

negative judgments about people will be less reliable than your positive judgments.

And research also shows we have a higher bar for rating someone positively than negatively, and our positive impressions are more easily reversed than our negative ones.