[agumonkey]

Yes.. I came to a similar sad realization. Either understand the game better or somehow treat people like confused scared kids posturing.

I also try to distill good vibes and motivation, bit by bit. Listening, suggesting, showing.

I've asked a few places but I've been looking for the social dynamics of work groups.

[mental1896]

This article helped me to understand "the game" a little better. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

[agumonkey]

I've read these articles back and forth and I honestly cannot grasp more than 30% of the ideas. The loser eludes me, the middle layer same..

I'd love to poke in people's head to be sure what are the motives behind their behavior (the main one I assume being a balance of respect/equality and money).

[oceanghost]

> I'd love to poke in people's head to be sure what are the motives behind their behavior

I suspect you're approaching things too logically. In my experience most people do something then rationalize why they've done that later, if at all. And that's without any perceptive, or memory problems or anything like that, and assumes good intent-- which a lot of people don't have.

I also suspect some people's brains work so differently from my subjective experience that there's effectively no way to understand them.

A very hard lesson for me was "don't try to use logic to understand irrational people."

I now tend to think of people in terms of, "can I predict a response or action by them?" By observation, you can kind of build a set of rules and start hypothesizing about them and update your model when you get more evidence. But you still need to be mindful that different conclusions can be reached with different or conflicting information.

It worked so well on an ex of mine that she thought I was spying on her somehow, because I often had reasoned out things I shouldn't have known. The most terrible example-- that she was cheating on me. I came to this conclusion from a few bits of evidence-- she wasn't really the curious type. Most of the film, music, etc she knew about were from me. And then one day, she started talking in detail about a film I knew she hadn't seen, and she used a word I had never heard her use before.

This lead me to think, "She's having some sort of social interactions that I'm unaware of, and they're probably watching movies together, and if its being kept secret, its probably something bad."

And I was correct.

[agumonkey]

That's too cold an approach for me

I'd rather try to connect emotionally and see who's responding. I grew up the way you think and I'm tired of it. If someone doesn't like me (or doesn't like me anymore), no problem, then I'll find other people, all I want is honesty.

That said, I've encountered the post rationalizing lying kind just too many times.. :)

[oceanghost]

I understand your feelings but I'm not saying you should do this with everyone-- just problematic or difficult people.