The thin line between projection and using intuition in behavioural analysis

We all know the thriller books and the Hollywood productions about FBI profilers. The intuition they use is unbelievable. But it’s also “given”. They were born with a special talent to see into a killer’s mind. They just get hit by a vision and… instantly know what the killer felt like during the act. Only that it has more to do with Disney’s productions than with life… 

The notions we are fed with are called social representations. There is a whole theory of how social representations of situations, people, and things are formed, and how they impact us and our emotions. The one about profiling contains the following elements:

• Past (often early childhood trauma) that predetermines an individual to “see into another person” 
• A talent that is given and cannot be learnt 
• Internal voices (and gut feelings) that are practically never wrong

The social representation of profiling is stripped of one thing. It doesn’t tell us how easy it is to project ourselves onto another person when using “intuition”. And this is very problematic, especially for the new adepts of behavioural analysis who think they should reach its social representation level. 

I’ve recently taken part in a teaching process for a group of future behavioural analysts. The group was given the tools, taught the basics and then sent home. Without a proper explanation and teaching on self-awareness, the biases we have when we analyse other people, and the constant counter-hypotheses building, we will be projecting our own traits, behaviours, and preferences onto another person. This may result, and I dare say it already has, in skewed analysis results. 

The one thing you need to know about intuition is that it’s not given to you when you’re born. It’s not given to you as part of your difficult childhood or any other traumatic experience. Proper intuition is learnt. And you learn it through self-awareness building and acquiring knowledge. 

You must know yourself and know when you are projecting your own traits onto someone else. At the beginning of your behavioural analysis work, all you will probably do is see what you know. And what you know best is your own behaviour. The next bias is priming. Have you ever read about a mental disorder to later see its symptoms in every second person you meet? This is what priming is – our brains have the tendency to use what is right at hand and still vivid in our memory. We see those behaviours and those patterns everywhere because of how available they are in our brains, not because it is true. 

Confirmation bias is the one everyone knows about, but not everyone can see in one’s work. The tendency to confirm what we think is enormous, and counterbalancing it when analysing human behaviour cannot be underestimated. This is why constant building of counter-hypotheses is so important during the process. 

Other biases may be: 

• Your emotions. For example, you are jealous of the person you are profiling. Your ambitions in the area the person works in were never realised and now you have a tendency to be jealous of the people who succeeded. It doesn’t have to be only work – it can be private life as well. Think of topics like having children, being happily married, and having a happy family. Or the opposite – being a nomad, happily travelling all over the world without a single worry. Whatever it is – you have to be aware of it. 
• Your emotions on that specific day – someone pissed you off and now you see the world more negatively. If so, step back and take a break to level your emotions. 
• You think you are an expert in the area in which the person you’re analysing works/lives – business, sport, specificity of the people in the place they live. This is all about building and using schemas and stereotypes which are often faulty. Knowing when you base your analysis on those versus the facts is crucial. 
• Your uncle was like that person/looked like that person. Or your mother, or someone you didn’t like at school. Both the people you cared about and those you hated may significantly impact the way you perceive someone similar to them. It may be any kind of similarity – their looks, the way of speaking, some tiny movements, or mimics. When your likings or dislikes take your analysis over, it’s the end of objectivity. 
• You are extremely sensitive to specific issues and topics. Child abuse and child neglect are common – but everyone has one’s share of those and they can be very different. You have to know what triggers you.
• You are easily overwhelmed by authority or… you never trust it – both ends of the spectrum can impact your analysis. 
• You have a very strong moral compass and high standards and when they are not met by the person you profile, you may have the tendency to mark them as more faulty than they really are
• Halo and horn effects are so well known. Only it’s not only about the looks. When you see some deception in a person, you may tend to mark the whole statement as deceptive when it’s not. And vice versa – when noticing that they are telling you the truth, you may think that the rest is true either. However, statements rarely are one or the other. We all mix and match truth with deceptions here and there. The thing is to know which parts are which.

There are topics and people we should not profile. And so be it. Like there is no universal tool for every household work, there is no universal behavioural analyst who can be good at everything they do. But the crucial element here is… to be aware of one’s own tendencies and the areas we are sensitive to. 

So if I’m to prescribe for this problem, it would be constant self-awareness – every day, during the analysis and outside of it. Is it difficult, time-consuming, and draining? Yes, it is. Is it worth it? Yes, it is! There is no better medicine for one’s biases than that. Acquiring knowledge is right after it. And equally important.