What outward traits relate to personal info?

January 26, 2007 8:12 PM

I've found that some deep seeded personal information manifests it's self through much more casual every day behavior. I'd like to learn how to spot more of these traits. Examples and clarification inside.

Here's how this question got started. I am a huge fan of the radio show "Loveline." On the show Dr. Drew magically knows things about people before they say anything about it. Here are the two most notable ones that he uses.

Some female callers have very young sounding voices... Like they sound like they are 7 years old even though they are 24. Dr. Drew noticed that this young sounding voice thing often correlates with the caller having gone through some sexual abuse at about the age that her voice sounds. He'll often ask callers if they were abused at about the age he thinks their voice sounds before they even mention childhood or abuse of any sort. The guy is right like 90% of the time or more.

The other one I notice a lot is that he will hear a certain laugh, then know from that laugh (more like a giggle) that a girl is multi-orgasmic. I can't remembering him being wrong on guessing that, though he doesn't use this trick nearly as much as the "young voice = abuse trick."

I've found these two small revelations to be hugely interesting. It makes me pay more attention to everyday conversation with the people around me.
What I would like to find now is a good source for other similar types of things. Books, links, movies, anything about other traits people outwardly express that are reflections of something deeper.

So, If you have a good source for info like this, please let me know. If you have any good observations yourself I'd love to hear them too.

posted by magikker to Human Relations (28 answers total)

I'm with odinsdream mostly. Read up on "cold reading" it's a technique that so called "psychics" use to dazzle their marks with things they already knew about themselves.

Also, don't discount the average blandness of the typical talk-radio caller.
posted by wfrgms at 8:27 PM on January 26, 2007

Oh and I don't mean to imply that Dr. Drew is a charlatan - in his line of work he probably just has tons of experience reading people from their subtle vocal hints and responses.
posted by wfrgms at 8:29 PM on January 26, 2007

he probably just has tons of experience reading people from their subtle vocal hints and responses.

Which is exactly what the question is about.

There are lots of body-language books out there, although I don't know how reliable they are.

There's an old one I heard that you can tell how heavy a drinker someone is by how closely they keep their glass to their mouths while not drinking. No idea if it's true.
posted by Bookhouse at 8:33 PM on January 26, 2007

You may be interested in the field of "cantometrics," which I don't know too much about, though the premise is fascinating. Essentially, musicologists have discovered a corrolation between the patriarchal nature of a society and the preferred vocal range in the folk singing of the same culture - an inverse corrolation. In other words, the "higher" the voices, the more macho the culture. How this might be reflected in most western cultures is tough to say . . . places like America have such fragmented musical forms I don't know where one would start. (Though it's interesting to speculate on how Sopranos characters seem to love Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, or how many heavy rock singers have high-pitched whiny voices! But this may be taking it too far, and would only speak to the machismo of a particular subculture at best.) In Bosnia, which is more 'male-dominated' than most European nations, most of our 'folk' music *is* sung at the higher end of the vocal range for both men and women, but that is (obviously) anecdotal evidence at best.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 9:05 PM on January 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm also with odinsdream, sounds like the stuff of carny trick, old wive's tale, or plain old bar room BS (really, giggle-prone and multiorgasmic, gimme a break) There's a huge amount of facinating but not so reliable folklore about how to tell secrets from outward behavior. The best ones appear to have a kernal of truth or somehow seem to inutitively make sense. They're things we want to believe for some reason (like the above example). Arms crossed means the person is being defensive... makes sense, they're protecting their body - or they're just cold. People who won't look you in the eye are being evasive, makes sense since of course you can tell when a person is lying by looking into their eyes (highly doubtful in itself) - or maybe they find you intimidating or unpleasant for some other reason. At one time phrenology was taken seriously, something to keep that in mind when assessing how gullible the good doctors callers and audience might be in this area, how pre-conditioned they are to believe such simple correlations exist.
posted by scheptech at 9:43 PM on January 26, 2007

I think it's educated guessing based on the Loveline caller/listener demographic... Or confirmation bias... I was abused at a young age, and I don't talk with a "little girl" voice.
posted by amyms at 9:50 PM on January 26, 2007

I would not be surprised to find this was just skillful "cold reading" or planted callers. That said, I remember hearing in an Intro Psych class that you could use tests like the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) to find out things about someone's personality by using questions unrelated to anything you want to find out, and then empirically evaluating for correlations. Something like <fake example:>Among serial killers, 85% were scared of clowns as kids. Therefore, someone who answers yes to "Were you scared of clowns as a kid?" may be more likely to be a serial killer. </fake example>

Now, the Wikipedia article on MMPI doesn't really go into this, and I'm sure it isn't such a simple 1:1 correlation, but if I understood the basics of the test's theory correctly (not a sure thing), then it seems at least plausible that verbal cues could just as easily have interesting psychological correlations.

IANAPsychologist, never went past that intro class, but thought it might be relevant.
posted by SuperNova at 10:00 PM on January 26, 2007

I would not be surprised to find this was just skillful "cold reading" or planted callers.

Doesn't answer the question, but please let me dispel the "carny trick" comments.

For those of you that don't know the show well, Dr. Drew has been doing this five days a week, two hours a day, for more than 25 years.

It's just plain-old experience and intuition. The girl that is 24 and sounds like she's 7 and has been abused? Drew knows this because he meets one Every. Single. Day.

Trust me, if you had this experience, you'd be picking up on these clues, too.
posted by frogan at 10:38 PM on January 26, 2007

Heck, Wikipedia even discusses it point-blank.

General Caller Betting

Without talking to a caller for more than 15-20 seconds Dr. Drew and Carolla would put them on hold and place $1 bets on the caller's past. The theory being that they have fielded so many calls by so many people that they could hear the specific problem in the caller's voice and detect what events led to their present. Example:

* Caller: I'm just depressed all the time.
* Carolla: I can hear the little girl voice, Drew. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
* Drew: My wife has my wallet. I'm good for the dollar.
* Carolla: I'm going with...father, no no, a weird Uncle touched her at the age of...9.
* Drew: I hear molestation too, but I'm going with kid-on-kid. This was someone she played with. Maybe a year or two younger.
* Carolla: Caller?
* Caller: My best friend in 3rd grade forced me to touch her repeatedly.

This serves to show people that their problems are not unique; hundreds of previous callers had the same problem and it manifested in a detectable way in their voices. Callers often call the show with seemingly trivial questions, but through General Caller Betting, Dr. Drew and Carolla cut through to deeper underlying problems.
posted by frogan at 10:41 PM on January 26, 2007

I heard Dr. Drew and Adam Carrolla do that years ago. A woman called in and after she said three words, they asked if they could put her on hold. After she said yes, they explained to the audience that everytime they heard that voice, they usually had a woman that was sexually abuse. Of course they were right. They didn't bring up anything about the age thing. It was compelling. I didn't get any vibe that it was a "planted caller."

I don't know if this falls into the same category, but when some people lie, they look up and to the left. I'm a lawyer and I do a lot of cross examinations and depositions. People stupidly try to lie under oath all of the time. They do the eye thing quite a bit, surprisingly.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:41 PM on January 26, 2007

Im with frogan. These guys have been doing this stuff for ages and they have the advantage of limiting their call-base to people with an incentive to call a sexual help show. You simply cannot walk around thinking 'any high pitched female voice means abuse.' The show attracts the abused.

Experience, limited samples, and confirmation bias has a lot to do here. A doctor may be able to pick out someone with hyperthyroidism out of the crowd (because of changes to the face), but I doubt you could do the same thing after looking at some photos of people with the disease. Your error rate would be a lot worse than the doctors. The doctors error rate wouldnt be so hot, especially out side of a clinical setting.

I think what youre looking for is something called social engineering. SE covers body language, wording, etc usually for personal gain. Lots of this stuff works but its spotty at best and the less hands-on experience you have the worse you will do. Theres just something about doing the same thing for years that gives you a hint to the unconscious clues some of us give off. This may not be teachable without the years of experience prereq.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:49 PM on January 26, 2007

I'm going to have to bring in a point about this sexual abuse thing: I'm not american, and in both the cultures I have lived in extensively, there are very little claims about sexual abuse as children. I hardly ever hear anything about people claiming that they were abused as a child.

In my interaction with americans, which only happens over the internet, there seems to _constantly_ someone who was abused as a child.

Is this because americans are more likely to abuse their children, or is it because americans are more likely to believe that they were sexually abused?

Is this an actual phenomena, or is it some manifestation of a type of mass hysteria? If we rewound time to 1960, would there be the same claims?

Just wondering.
posted by markesh at 11:19 PM on January 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

In my interaction with americans, which only happens over the internet, there seems to _constantly_ someone who was abused as a child.

Is this because americans are more likely to abuse their children, or is it because americans are more likely to believe that they were sexually abused?

I'd argue that it's selection bias. Abuse, neglect or other such mistreatment may lead people to seek approval and validation moreso than your average person. The internet provides a fairly safe, fairly anonymous way to do so. Thus, you enconter for more of them in your online travels than you do in person.
posted by chrisamiller at 12:09 AM on January 27, 2007

Response by poster: I didn't mean for this post to turn into a "are there plants on the show loveline" or "My voice is high, I wasn't abused" debate. I just used those examples because they are the two strongest ones that come to mind. If you've read "blink" there is an interesting section on micro facial expressions. And a researcher being able to tell all kinds of things about someone based on unconscious expressions. There is all so the researcher that can practically predict if a couple will be divorced in a couple years. I guess I should have used those examples instead
posted by magikker at 1:52 AM on January 27, 2007

Markesh, people didn't talk about sexual abuse as much in the 60s. Thankfully that is changing. It's not mass hysteria - I'd claim that more women than not have experienced some degree of sexual abuse, as well as way more men than you might think.

With respect to actual cultural differences in abuse incidents, I don't know. I do know that, in many cultures, one does not talk about family issues outside the family. I am not generalizing to all families in a specific culture, just citing some general research on multiculturalism and psychotherapy that's fresh in my mind.
posted by forensicphd at 6:38 AM on January 27, 2007

I want to know how you can tell from a woman's laugh that she is multi-orgasmic. That could be useful knowledge in many situations.
posted by megatherium at 6:43 AM on January 27, 2007

Don't radio call-in shows employ call screeners (whose job is to get the skinny on the caller and pass it along to the host)?

Also: what megatherium just said.
posted by notyou at 9:09 AM on January 27, 2007

I don't know how true those "little signs" are of anything deeper, really. That's one of the reasons I got irritated every time I listened to Loveline - the hosts' insistence that so many of their female callers had been abused. It's not like I ever listened to it regularly, but I found a lot of the times I heard it, the women calling in would say no, they had not been abused, and the hosts would immediately discount that and say they weren't telling the truth/they were covering something up. Also, in many cases, wtf did the caller's past have to do with the question they were asking? It was icky to listen to these men insisting on this view (to the audience) of the women that called them asking for advice - a way of putting them down, making them vulnerable in public. Really icky.

So my personal take on it is that:
1) you're forgetting the times he is wrong because of how dramatic the times he is right are;
2) you're discounting the desire of a younger, female supplicant (asking for advice) to please the older, male authority figure by telling him what he seems to want to hear (a regular listener is going to know this is a common question from these hosts);
3) you're discounting the desire for drama on the part of people who volunteer to participate in these shows; cf. Jerry Springer and the like - the more wild and dramatic you can be, whether it's true or not, the more attention you get;
4) you're discounting the ability of someone that thinks they've figured out these "little signs" to ignore or explain away all the cases that don't fit their chosen pattern of interpretation.
posted by Melinika at 9:16 AM on January 27, 2007

If you've read "blink" there is an interesting section on micro

Interesting yes, practical no. All I'm saying is this field is full of stuff and nonsense driven by a deep desire for it to be so, who wouldn't want a reliable "tell" playing poker, or when selling for a living, while dating, etc.
posted by scheptech at 9:56 AM on January 27, 2007

I'm just going to throw out there that a young woman or girl calling Loveline and giggling over Adam and Drew is statistically* more likely to lie when asked if she is multi-orgasmic.

*Surely there have been studies.
posted by amanda at 10:18 AM on January 27, 2007

It makes me pay more attention to everyday conversation with the people around me.

Exactly. Even though you know the cues, I bet you wouldn't be able to tell if someone was abused or multi-orgasmic with anywhere near Dr. Drew's accuracy. As described above, even Adam Corolla can't get as much detail out.

I believe the way to be able to quickly deduce things from people comes with practice, and there are two specific things you can do to improve your skill at reading people: Pay incredibly solid attention to them, do not let your mind wander, ever; and when you notice something non-obvious, mention it and see whether it resonates with that person.

Don't try to take incredibly detailed shots in the dark, just try to "get into" their head, and figure out the subtext of their body language and speech with a resonable level of confidence. Why are they saying what they're saying? What are they feeling? What kind of person are they?

After you have that down, you may be able to notice correlations: Giggling in an easygoing and relaxed way may be correlated with being able to relax and enjoy sexual situations, and orgasms are easier when you're relaxed.
posted by trevyn at 10:27 AM on January 27, 2007

Is this because americans are more likely to abuse their children, or is it because americans are more likely to believe that they were sexually abused?

Getting off topic a bit, I suppose, but I'll agree with forensicphd--it could be that non-Americans are abused every bit as much as Americans, but they don't feel free to speak about it.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:51 AM on January 27, 2007

Response by poster: Melinika, Like a said a couple posts above yours, there are researchers studying this type of thing in controlled settings and having great success. All those things you think I am forgetting or discounting about loveline aren't really the point, because whether or not you believe Dr. Drew is good at his job, there are tons of "physics" how make a living with similar skills.
I'm not looking to go around and just knowing things about people, I am more interested in this whole thing as a broader question about human nature. I am looking for resources on this field over all. It seems to me that with enough research being done some one must have written something worth reading. Though I can't find it yet.

The Dr. Drew examples, were my poorly chosen proof this phenomena exists in some form or fashion.
posted by magikker at 11:41 AM on January 27, 2007

Best answer: This is a really interesting question! I think there are a lot of correlations like this (certain outward actions that correlate with certain other things people are likely to do, or certain physical traits or inward emotions people are likely to have).

There are whole systems that claim to explain these correlations. One is Five Elements theory, from traditional chinese medicine. For example, I used to have a lot of typical "earth" traits -- peacemaker, sweet tooth, slow digestion, homebody. So, once I knew someone craved the same spices as me, I suddenly had a whole complex of things I suspected might also be true about them ("are you a night person?") By far the best book on this is Between Heaven and Earth. (To see an example, use Amazon's "search inside" to read about "Dorothy: Exemplar of Earth," or similar sections on the other elements.)

Other systems like Five Elements theory are: ayurveda's concept of "doshas" (another one that focuses a lot on physical traits), Meyers-Briggs personality types (more about thoughts, skills, feelings, and motivations), and the enneagram. These all have different approaches to talking about what goes with what, letting you get better at guessing things about people.

To me, the most interesting thing is that even though these theories claim to explain it all, no matter how much I read, there's never a feeling that "oh, I have it all figured out" -- each insight just leads to a slightly more informed curiosity about how differently each person's mind works.
posted by salvia at 1:29 PM on January 27, 2007 [5 favorites]

I often hear that alcoholics stop emotionally maturing at the same age they take up alcohol. It works for the ones I know, makes a lot of things make sense, especially for adults who started drinking as teens.
posted by GaelFC at 1:40 PM on January 27, 2007

Best answer: I'm not quite sure if any of this is what you want, but I hope some of it is useful:

You referenced John Gottman's relationship studies above, but I didn't mention those when I replied because it seemed like (with your Dr. Drew example) you were looking for methods usable in casual interactions and Gottman's work focuses on close relationships. I don't know from your comment about not having found any resources at all if you're read his books yet, or if you have and that's not what you're looking for? He breaks down how they analyze conversations between couples at his clinic, pointing at small cues that are indicative of larger troubles in the relationship. I found it useful reading to discuss with my husband, to help look at patterns in our interactions.

Something sort of similar that I have read is in Deborah Tannen's book You Just Don't Understand, where she analyzes videotaped conversation between male and female children to point at the differences in how men and women are taught to interact; in her books she discusses people that speak directly or indirectly based on their culture and gender. That, again, is not something you can use to instantly know specific things about another person in casual conversation, but it's fascinating to see how subtle differences in talking shape how people express themselves and interact with each other on much deeper levels. If you can figure out another person's style from talking to them you can change how you interact with them to be much more useful.

That also reminds me of Dealing With People You Can't Stand, which involves analyzing problem behavior from another person, explaining the person's underlying motivations (the bad behavior is sometimes the result of good intentions but you have to look past the surface annoyance), and then changing how you interact with them to mitigate the problem behavior.

In a much more dismissable and certainly not a bit scientific way (but usable in casual interaction to a degree), I've used both astrology (sun signs and reading planets) and Enneagram information to analyze people with a good rate of accuracy. I don't know how much of the astrology I've used is good guessing/leaps of intuition but I'm sure that plays more than a little into it, since I'm thoroughly skeptical on how/why astrology works. The Enneagram books I own are by Don Richard Riso (online here) and relate the different types to different psychological patterns/diagnoses, with scales of how the different types behave when they're healthy and when they're not healthy, and therefore how to predict how a certain type will act under stress.
posted by Melinika at 2:07 PM on January 27, 2007

How about phrenology?
posted by footnote at 8:44 AM on January 29, 2007

I don't know if this falls into the same category, but when some people lie, they look up and to the left. I'm a lawyer and I do a lot of cross examinations and depositions. People stupidly try to lie under oath all of the time. They do the eye thing quite a bit, surprisingly.

Google Neuro-Linguistic Programming (or NLP) for more information on this, but beware that NLP is, from what I can tell, half-science and half-speculation. Samuel L. Jackson gave this eye movement theory a boost in popularity when he referenced it in his movie in "The Negotiator" a couple of years ago.
posted by gd779 at 12:21 PM on January 29, 2007