Young children are better than adults at detecting sociopathic people.

   

 "The Power of Nice, How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness" by Linda  Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval has a section titled "Fine Tune Your Instincts"  has  a powerful reminder about our children and reinforcing their “trusting their feelings.”

 For some people, reading body cues is a professional necessity.  Poker players, for  example, will tell you that if a person looks down and to the left, they're lying. We might not all have the skills of a professional poker player, but deep down we all have solid instincts that enable us to detect when someone isn't being straight with us. 

"Harvard psychologist Martha Stout says that because young children don't have fully developed language skills, they're much more reliant on nonverbal cues, like body language and tone of voice.  It's for this reason that young children, as well as dogs, are much better than adults at detecting dishonest, and even sociopathic, people." 

There's more that's very interesting in this section (including how brain-damaged people read others. Martha Stout is the author of "The Sociopath Next Door" and "The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness.

Comments

[Isle Dance]

Oh yes, this is so very true. We need to encourage parents to keep that instinct protected.

[Mike Dodson]

While Thaler & Koval don't cover it, there is adequate evidence that suggests that animals are even better at identifying threat than youngsters, as they rely entirely on nonverbal cues, even when we speak to them. Has your dog ever taken a dislike to someone? Has your dog ever stood between you and a stranger? Being aware of these things can be helpful to you in assessing your immediate safety.