Almost everyone possesses several cultivated personas, pretenses they display to the world. In other words, you have learned how to behave in sociologically acceptable ways, in various situations, in your professional and personal life.
By the time you are seven years old, your emotional response to any given circumstances is fairly mature, although too honest according to social standards; at that age you haven’t yet learned to guard your reactions.
Your reaction to stressful situations is important because this is when your authentic personality emerges. The façade melts away and the unique idiosyncrasies (and with select individuals, dangerous personality traits) emerge.
You, as a business owner, other decision-maker, or just someone who wants to more genuinely know yourself and others, can save an enormous amount of time and money knowing how a potential business partner, employee, opponent, love interest, or other individual reacts to stress.
As the saying goes, people don’t change, you just learn more about them. When you know someone’s subconscious personality—all those wicked fears and defenses–very well, you’re able to drastically limit your risk.
Here are five ways to determine how a person reacts to stress:
- Utilize a talented psychologist. But that person you’re curious about may not be available for face-to-face sessions.
- Place the person in simulated, high-pressure situations and observe their behavior. However, this may be feasible in a job interview situation, but not in many others.
- Secretly place your subject in a stressful situation and watch how they respond. Then again, you may not even have access to the subject.
- Hire a security investigations firm to analyze the subject’s background and, or to keep tabs on the subject. There exist private security organizations that possess resources that even the highest reaches of federal law enforcement lack. Yet this will cost you big money, thousands of dollars per subject; that is, if the firm even agrees to work with you. Unfortunately, no matter how good of an investigator you are, no matter how deep you dig, no matter how many databases you have access to, you can never know another person completely through these means, and there are still ways a clever person can evade detection.
- Considering you can acquire a small sample of the subject’s spontaneous handwriting, you can begin to operate from a position of significant strength, through the science of handwriting analysis. Real, hidden personality is exposed through this method.
Under extreme duress, will the subject react coolly, keeping their composure, will they lose it emotionally, or worse, will they become erratic and prove that they can’t be trusted under pressure?
Extreme situations (see the disclaimer “Please note…” on the following linked page) may demand an analysis focusing on potential personality problem areas: https://scottpetullo.com/2011/07/5-possible-ways-to-understand-and-outmaneuver-your-enemy/
Find out how a person reacts to stress and whether or not an individual presents a potential risk to you through my invaluable assessments.
Copyright © 2012 Scott Petullo