#physical profiling

Extraversion and Dominance

- One could identify traits of certain extraversion in a person and dominance by a glance at their shoes, if they're wearing practical sandals with a quite a heel on them it could tell us a few things about the person :

If they had their foot nails sorted out or manicured could possibly tell that the person is someone who cares mostly based on their personal appearence and high traits of extraversion is indeed visible, they took time diligently manicuring their nails not their hand nails but foot nails, time and effort given to such personal look, sandals conveys certain degree of dominance based by the number of foot parts that are clearly seen or exposed to the people who saw it which is ( mostly more likely private) and the heels which convey certain degree of dominance, the person that does has a nail manicured could tell that they're extraverted, dominant, rather have a spare time on their life to do such things, the need to others to like or approve her in a society, rather a person who likes and appreciate attention given to them  saying that attention is a mental stimulation need for self-gratification, most likely dramatic and overeact on certain stimulations such as emotional or stressful situation, the ability to less function well during certain stimulants, the inability to focus well during certain distraction, sometimes eccentric and unique in a tendency to gain specific attention from a person, more time on hand, possibly part time job less likely professional but considered as a possibility.

If they wear a nail polish on them it shows more of those traits, job that include the person to be in the center of attention, or rather that the person has an occupation or tendencies that need the person to dress and makeup in specific conditions and way but still less professional, if they wore socks with the shoe closed and a plain coloured clothing we could say that the person works somewhat for a professional job but in this occasion less possible, fashion, performer, stage artist, singer do show a specific tendency against this type of shoe, evidence needs to be gathered , information never stand alone.

From observing the person's nail polish colour we can determine a few things, such as red colour supports extraversion, and dominance because it attracts attention from others, black could mean that the person wants to be seen as someone who is dark,  elegance, disciplined, having a certain control, and power, a deep association to intimidate people, radiate authority, etc. Basically the colour of the polish is a step further to an accurate conclusion or so. One that wears or use a lot of red coloured products could indicate that the person is inclined relationship wise.

Possible profile : High self - esteem, more confident, dominant, attention seeker, extraverted, outgoing, socially inclined, the need of approval in a certain group, the need of control, sometimes impulsive less planning prefer things to be done and planned in the spot or spontaneous behaviour one would say, less level of dopamine , I would say less focused , easily bored by a few stimulation , the need of new activities to be done more an active person, less motivation, more possibility to be unorganized undisciplined and lazy ( not dependable)

The use is divided by 2 part : - The on purpose - Not on purpose What do I mean is that at type 1 the person wore the shoes because they want to, it's their personality they picked it themselves. In type 2 the person use the shoe because she needed to look like so in a job, occupation, social area, she doesn't choose to use that shoes but people tell her to because of some specific inquiries in a person's life. The personality and profile could be drastically changed by such reason. As I said evidence, we need more data to come up to a better and accurate conclusion.

Cheers!

Welcome to the first part of the Profiling series. Deduction itself can be broken into many subsections and branches, but mainly all of those are classified into 3 main parts: Physical, Language, and Psychological. These contain sub-topics within deduction ranging from body language to logic reasoning to personality typing. But to understand these, and to be able to use them accurately and to their full potential, you have to understand how they are classified and what they are primarily used for. In each part of this series we will introduce you to a new area of profiling.  There’s so much to talk about that we could never cover it in this introductory post, which is why this series is meant to frame your mind for much larger, future series that will go in depth on these topics. Here in Part 1 we'll be looking at the seemingly most popular: Physical Profiling.

WHAT IS PHYSICAL PROFILING?

Physical Profiling is a form of reading ones character, behaviour, and lifestyle from physical aspects such as hands, clothing, or belongings. This is often seen in Sherlock Holmes novels/representations, and similar characters. For Sherlock fans it’s known as regular deduction which we see in a typical Sherlock episode. Take “A Study in Pink” for example; in this episode Sherlock shows 2 extremely important deductions, not just to the episode as a story, but as an introduction to the character, and what we want to focus on, his way of thinking. So the question is, what does he actually do? We see him come to conclusions, and we see his reasoning, but what we don’t see is what actually goes on in his head. Does he pick the objects he picks at random? Does he just scan everything? How does he know what to look for? How does he know what something means? We see the trail he makes from point A to point B, but we don’t see how he makes this trail. So let’s shift away from the show and look at the actual method a bit.

What we have to understand is how physical profiling is composed. When we interact with our surroundings we leave residue behind, and the surroundings leave it on us, everything is connected to everything and when there’s a change caused by you or by anything else there will be a consequence to said change. Physical profiling is the method we use to identify said changes in the physical appearance or a person and recognize how they came to be. If I eat something, anything, that food is gonna leave a mark on me, I’m going to have crumbs on my shirt, or maybe a stain on my pants, my hands are going to get greasy. In deduction we learn to trace back those clues to their source, and from there build a scene of what happened in someone’s life. And we’re using the physical aspects of a person, the simple things we can see every day like their clothes or stains, or their shoes, or any accessories, to look for these clues and trace them back to find the information we want. Each time you look at a person you’ll come up with new questions. You know those questions are getting you somewhere when your answers start to overlap.

THINGS TO OBSERVE

So off the bat the first thing that we’re likely to do is observe, which is not the same as looking. Observation involves asking questions about what we take in with our senses. Let’s start from bottom and move to the top, beginning with shoes.

Shoes

Now these may seem very common but they can actually tell you a lot, they are in fact one of the most telling pieces of clothing people wear, think about it, how often do you wash them? How often do you check for scratches on the rubber? Or change the laces? Are they comfortable? Are they for work? What do you use them for? How often? Where do you go? Shoes are the one thing you will carry with you no matter where you go.

Shins & Knees

Let’s move on to shins and knees. This can tell you how someones been sitting, what they’ve been doing while sitting, how enjoyable their time was as they sat. If there’s some kind of residue it can tell you what else they’ve been doing and where they’ve been. Dust? Paint? Mud? Clean? Different color? Bleach stained? These things are worthy of noting.

Shirt & Pants

Next is shirt and pants. Is it stained, if so with what? If it’s food then what kind of food? Is it easy to spill? Look at the angle of the stain. Is it torn? Maybe they work with it a lot, or do sports with it. Material is also quite telling. Hot, cold, wet, rainy, dry, dusty, or hill covered places clothing specific to that environment. Comfort is also a factor - uncomfortable clothes lead to an uncomfortable situation or place - maybe a job or job interview they’re worried about.

Accessories

It’s important to keep in mind any accessories they have on them. This says a lot about what they value and prioritize.

Do they have a phone? In the pocket they can tell you handedness. Is it an expensive one? Does it have alarms? Does it have a case? What’s the background picture? Does it have scratches?

Do they have a purse?

Do they use pockets, if so which ones?

Rings? Do they correlate to social status and/or marriage?

Are they wearing earphones?

Important job?

How much exercise?

Owns a car or uses public transport?

Good health?

Watch? Is it analog? Is it expensive?

CONCLUSION

In our intro series, we gave you a basic outline of the three aspects of building a profile of person. These three aspects make up the whole of deduction. For the next few posts, we’ll be focusing on building a full profile of a person. The goal of this series is to help you get past the plateau you hit after you get raw data. “He’s right handed!…Yeah that’s about it”. We’ll take you through getting raw data, extrapolating that data, and then drawing deeper conclusions. In this post, we’ll set a scene and collect raw data to work with in the next posts.

A critical point of deduction will be covered in this series, the idea of cause and effect. In this post, we’ll practice observing the effects.

Observing a Person

When observing a person, one should start with the shoes. They often yield the most information about a person for a few simple reasons. People take them literally everywhere, they collect data in that time, traces of what that person has done while wearing them. Also, what someone has done recently can be narrowed depending on what kind they’re wearing (an obvious example being, you aren’t going to wear dress shoes on a hike). Take note of color, style, and size.

Work your way up from there. Look at the shins, knees, what kind of pants they’re wearing, or any visible blemishes (bruises, cuts, scrapes, etc.) Look for any rips, tears, stains, or lack thereof, on the pants. 

Work your way up to the shirt, look for similar things, rips, stains, color, type of shirt, style, coat or no coat.

Then look at the hands, which yield a similar amount of information as the shoes. People interact with the world through their hands, and marks will be left. Look at the palms, back of the hand, fingertips, knuckles, nails, and wrists for any blemishes on the skin, texture, and small details. Also take note of what hand they seem to use more often than the other.

Then observe the face, shaving habits (are they clean shaven or have they not shaved in awhile? Do they have a beard?) Take note of blemishes, jewelry (necklaces, any type of piercing, glasses, etc), or anything else that catches your eye. Take note of makeup as well as any facial grooming such as plucked eyebrows.

All the while, take note of their body language. Are there any gestures they keep repeating? (Rubbing their face, eyes, temples, wiping their hands on their pants, etc.) Are their legs crossed? Arms crossed? Take note of their body positions. Observe the face, look for the microexpressions that were covered in the previous series.

It is important that your observations aren’t mixed with opinions. For example, don’t describe something as “messy”, rather, describe what makes it messy (ie, many objects scattered around) Strive to make your observations as objective as possible, formed by qualitative and quantitative statements.

Dinner for Two

In this post, we’ll observe two people on a date at a local restaurant.

You go out to dinner one night with a few friends when you observe two people across the room in a booth, clearly on a date. There’s one male, one female, whom you estimate are in their mid to late twenties.

Subject A

You decide to focus on the male first. He wears dusty, but otherwise clean, tan work boots, heavy duty, steel toed. His clean, untorn pair of blue jeans cover the top of the boots. You see the outline of a wallet in his right pocket, but no keys in that pocket. He’s dressed in a simple grey v neck T-shirt. His hair is cut short and is clean shaven, no nicks. He keeps shifting in his seat. From this distance, you can see he continues to wipe his palms under the table, and he’s smiling and laughing. Occasionally, he rubs his nose. Later, when he became more engrossed with the conversation, he leaned forward, arms on the table. Under the table, his leg bounces up and down. When his hands are above the table, you can tell they’re rough in texture. His pointer and middle finger knuckles on both hands look to be split, partially healed. He’s muscular and well toned. You observe he is also tanned, with discoloration on his left pointer and middle finger, as well as around the nails. He ordered a beer to drink, which sits on his left.  You estimate he’s about 1.8 meters tall (6 feet).

Subject B

The female is wearing a pair of simple black flats and legs are shaved. The shoes look to be well worn, yet in good condition. Her legs are crossed, right over left, under the table. She’s wearing a casual, floral patterned, knee high dress and jean jacket without any noticeable rips or tears. Her shoulder length hair has been recently curled. Her nails are well groomed, manicured, and painted red. You notice ink stains on the pinky side of her hand. Occasionally, she leans back in her seat and plays with her black stud earring on her right ear. She’s wearing subtle eyeliner and mascara.You notice a blemish across the bridge of her nose. She has a small black handbag on the inside of the booth. Later on, she ordered a mixed drink and continues to stir it with the straw between sips, nodding while the male speaks. However, she seems to do most of the talking, which she elaborates on using simple hand gestures.  You estimate she is about 1.6 meters tall (five foot six).

Conclusion

As the first step of the whole process, observation must not be overlooked. You cannot build a building without solid foundation. Observations are the foundation on which you build your deductions. You cannot form accurate deductions without quality, unbiased observations. Michael Calladus has more information in the Master Class he’s currently working on, I highly recommend you read it.