There’s an essential skill for developing better relationships, knowing people better, making better hiring and business decisions and choosing the right partner: Knowing people! Let’s take a closer look at human behaviour.

There’s no prescription for knowing human behaviour better, but I’m sharing a list below that is close to it. This list is the essence of the thinking models and approaches that I have used most often in the areas of sociology, psychology, business interview and human behaviour analysis. It can be added onto and expanded. Please don’t hesitate to add your suggestions as comments.

What You Need to Learn to Know Human Behaviour

• Identity Theories (Cognitive, Cultural and Developmental Aspects)
• Personality Factors (Big Five, 16 PF, the notion of polarity in identity characteristics)
• Motivation (Why do people do what they do? – Dan Pink; Steven Pinker; Philip Zimbardo)
• Actualizing Oneself (Maslow’s Hierarchy)
• Professional and Personal Identity (Character Abrasion – R. Sennett)
• Pattern Recognition (How memory works? How do associations affect thinking in job interviews? Recognising facial expressions and emotions. Detecting threats)
• Learning Theories (Bandura’s notion of Social Learning, Skinner’s notion of Conditional Learning)
• Mirroring (Mental Mirroring; how do empathy and sympathy work?)
• Cognitive Capacity Indicators (Memory, abstraction skills, language and ability to build complex sentences, conceptualization skills)
• The distinction and dimensions between Individuality and Collectiveness
• Culture-centeredness (Ethnocentrism and personal values)
• Vertical and horizontal mobility with business opportunities, the notions of equality of opportunities
• Socio-economy and the basis of Behavioural Economy (Daniel Kahneman)
• Micro expressions (Paul Ekman)
• Games People Play and Transactional Analysis(Eric Berne)

Remember that there are various personality structures.

Some people seek people that that can trust while some other seek those that make them feel powerful, or those whom they can follow. Of course, knowing the personality of the person in front of you is a skill. And it develops over time.