My strongest memory of high school is a girl named Beth. She seemed supernatural. It was like she could x-ray people’s personalities from 10 different angles, reading their intentions, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses, then use the data for whatever purposes she wanted. When she (rarely) looked at me, she seemed to be saying, “Poor child you don't know how I do this, do you?” She wound up as the class president and with the most desirable boyfriend. Last I heard, she had raised three perfect children and made a fortune in real estate.

I also remember Don, Beth's exact opposite -- a complete dunce about others’ intentions or motivations. Don was president of the math club, wore odd flannel shirts, sported a slide rule on his belt and a plastic pen protector in his shirt pocket, and never seemed to speak. In short, he was the archetypal nerd. Which didn't hurt his career: after graduating from MIT, he became a professor of theoretical physics at a major west coast university..

There were many Dons in my school. They grew up to be computer geeks or physicists, or if they were Donnas, they typically became librarians. The Beths became real estate agents or public relations executives, and their male counterparts became salesmen and politicians.
 

The Beths have a set of skills and abilities that allowed them to “size up” other people very quickly and translate what they've learned into targeted action. This ability is likely a product of both training by observation of others, particularly parents, and genetics.

The picture is more complex for the Dons of the world. Don could might have some form of brain damage or depression. More likely, he suffered from an autistic disorder, perhaps Asperger’s Syndrome. Folks with Asperger's are terrible at reading other people's verbal and non-verbally cues. They can appear “dorky,” weird, disengaged, or anti-social, when in fact they're just trying to cope with extreme sensitivity to sounds, tastes, smells, sights and other stimulation.

Strengths and Surprising Weaknesses
The weaknesses of Dons are obvious; but what about the Beths? They understand how to pick up on visual and verbal cues, read body language like a pro (even if they don't quite know how they do it) and have a nearly uncanny ability to sense what other people are about. This is a huge advantage, often used in some field where their ability to read cues allows them to be brilliant diplomats, negotiators, or businesspeople.

But the Beths of the world are often less strong in understanding the pattern of these cues to determine the person's overall personality The trick for the Beths is to not get swept up in their intuition, and fail to see the big picture.

The Rest of Us
The Dons and Beths are the extremes, and probably represent about 30 percent of the population. Those of us in the middle face a nearly universal problem – we don't observe well enough, and we don't know how to listen. We're usually either too anxious or too self-involved to pay attention. Usually, we read people neither well nor badly on average, but average isn't good enough. We may do a great job with people very familiar to us, but even with them we sometimes fail miserably. This happens because our psychological development is uneven, and some areas of our perception and understanding allow at best a fuzzy focus or half-baked inferences. In addition, we all have distortions of personality and various neurotic traits. For most of us, there is no substitute for discovering those distortions, and then correcting them.

Unfortunately, most people assume that they already know how to read others. We're taught in homes and schools and religious organizations that we can know people through cultural similarity. Yes, people being nice to each other produces openness, which produces ease of mutual recognition, and therefore an easy reading.

But the real world is a tougher place. And if people do realize they aren't very good at reading people right, they feel embarrassed or inadequate. They tend to deny their inability or pretend it's not important. They may look to relationships with old friends who they already know well, to make themselves feel competent. They don't think about the mistakes they make with strangers, and don't realize that it is with the present strangers that their future lies.

So how can we learn? Dons and Beths, Asperger's folk, nerds, techies, the left-brained, and the half educated - all of us can be better at understanding what people are about then we ever dreamed. We just have to open our eyes, have the desire, and get to work.

I wonder what high school would have been like if this homework had been included with the English, science, and math. And if it had, I wonder, would Beth have gone out with me?
 

Copyright © 2005 Richard N. Pomerance

Permission is granted to reprint this article in whole or in part, provided that you include the following: the byline, "by Richard Pomerance, Ph.D."; the copyright notice, "Copyright © 2005 Richard Pomerance," and the biographical information, "Boston-based Richard Pomerance, Ph.D. specializes in helping people make better relationship decisions in their personal and business lives. Contact him at: (doctorp@smartrelationshipdecisions.com)."