67 Psychological Red Flags That Are Easy To Miss But Hard To Unsee

How they treat people they don't need anything from. It's surprisingly hard to fake consistently.

You can get a pretty good sense of a person’s deepest fears and insecurities by paying close attention to the things that upset them. People react angrily when they are confronted by things that invoke their inner fears.

This is true in many contexts, but I’ll give an extreme example to illustrate: neither securely heterosexual men nor openly gay men get angry if you call them gay, but a latent or closeted gay man will get furious if you call him gay. Whenever you come across a homophobe, 99 times out of 100 that dude is fighting down some inner demons.

When someone is effusively nice. I’m not talking about genuinely kind people, I mean fake niceness. It means they want something.

I used to work with a guy who was like this. I give a presentation, “oh my god, that was brilliant.” I write a video, “you have more talent in your pinky than I have at all.” Direct quotes. I’d ask him to stop, and he’d say something like “but I can’t ignore your talent!”

It stopped the literal day he realized that I did not have the power to promote him. Within a week, he was making comments to me like “stick to your job” and “you’re a little [drama]-stirrer.” Saw it coming from jump.

How they talk about other people when they are not around is one of the biggest things I pay attention to. I don't just base my opinion of people off of how they treat me directly but how they treat others, especially when they don't get their way. Are they happy for their friends or are they just thinking, "must be nice for them" when they get opportunities they don't have? Are they ever the villain in their stories or are they always the victim with zero account of their own actions? Do they respond to the things you say, or just move onto whatever semi-related thing they already decided they want to say? Do they ignore harmful behavior in their friends just because they aren't personally affected?

The assumptions they make about other people’s intentions tells you more about a person than almost anything else.

Notice how they handle disagreement. Character usually shows up under stress, not comfort.

Aerhyce:

Admitting mistakes as well.

Doing something good when they think no one is watching.

When there is always an excuse and no accountability.

If it's not an immediate yes, it's a no. Also the opposite is true.

People usually dont want to outright give you the answer you dont want to hear and are happy to dress it up rather than being straightforward.

Outward denial of their true intent. "I'm not here to make trouble for you..." Yes you are. "I would never say that about her." Yes you did.

How people treat their kids. I had a neighbour who was so falsely nice to everyone, but I kept catching her sneering and seething at her kids for the most benign reasons. I could see her mean streak a mile away but everyone thought she was a ray of sunshine. Low and behold it all came out her and her boyfriend have been putting her hands on her 14 year old son and he’s just been sent to live with his grandmother by social services.

The subtle way that they treat people who are “below their social status”. It’s hard to explain, but they will act really bubbly and talkative with people who they view as their equals. But if someone else tries to talk to them who they see as not good enough for them, they will give them this blank stare and one word answers.

People often accuse others of their worst personal traits. This is especially true for people who are emotionally immature or have narcissistic traits. When their egos are threatened, they will randomly accuse you of whatever mean spirited traits they themselves feel. This is because they can't handle the reality of how terrible they feel, so they project their negative feelings onto others.

How they talk about other’s success. If they’re upset and jealous anytime anyone in their life is doing well/better than them, I steer clear. The world is big enough for everyone to win, and people who get upset over other’s success is a huge red flag.

Their word choice. Its very specific words that most people would miss that entirely change the meaning of the sentence and reveal the underlying perception behind the idea.

How they handle something going wrong. I have a boss that has a crazy short fuse - he slipped while squeegeeing once and destroyed the squeegee. He got his finger caught in something, got mad about it, punched a steel door and broke his hand.

BUT

Whenever any of us under him make a mistake, its always a calm conversation, making sure we know how it went wrong, what to do next time, etc. The most ive ever seen him yell at another human being is just stuff like "cmon man, weve been over this."

Hes an ex-marine who was in Fallujah and nearly passed on the field, revived by the combat medic.

Hes an awesome guy and id do anything for him.

For me is I think is how they act in front of you if you are winning or having some positive achievement in life, and you see them smiling feeling happy at you. But if you catch that small split second where their eyes go flat or they do that rolling eyes?

I play a lot of board games with a lot of people. Ive come to figure out you can learn a lot about someone based on how they play.

I think people tend to lower some of those walls because "it's just a game", but really you can see how a person lies, how aggressive their moves are, and even how good of a loser they are. It's pretty revealing imo.

I really notice people’s lack of situational awareness. Like, those who stop in a doorway to look at their phone, those in a group taking up an entire path or hallway even though other people are trying to walk by, people who park their shopping cart in the middle of an aisle blocking everyone else, that sort of thing.

I shouldn’t HAVE to say “Excuse me” in order for you to realize other people exist. I pretty consistently come up on groups of people on the path here and they SEE ME, they look right at me, but just stand there until I’m like, “Uhhh, hey, just need to squeeze by you...” Again, I shouldn’t have to say anything nor should I have to come to a full stop and wait for you all to move - you made eye contact with me when I was 10+ yards out.

It’s just SCREAMS main character syndrome to me. Or a lack of survival instinct? These are the people who, if we weren’t in a modern, cushy society and instead were back in our hunter/gatherer days, would be picked off by predators. How are you not getting mugged/pick-pocketed when visiting a big city? How have you not been hit by a car yet?

The survival instinct aspect aside, I tend to look at it more as selfishness and again, main character syndrome. Can’t be bothered to notice other people exist. Can’t be bothered to have the thought process of, “Oh look, another person doth approach, they obviously are looking to traverse this space, I shall move my lazy b*m out of their way so that they may carry on with their pursuit unimpeded.”

Really grinds my gears, as the saying goes. Use your eyes and your ears, get out of your own head and frackin’ look around you. Be courteous for God’s sake. How many times here in my community do I see people walking, on bicycles, or in little vehicles (we are a car-free community but we have ATVs and golf carts and such) having to come to a complete stop to wait for people to move, when they obviously SAW YOU long before that. It’s like establishing dominance and control or something? So I guess it’s not always a case of being oblivious, just not noticing other people, sometimes they notice and just choose to not get out of the way.

Beware of people that boost your ego if they are in a position to gain from you. Sometimes people who are giving praise to those around them are only doing it because they want to start a praise feedback loop that comes back their way. They know that by boosting your ego it will favour them and build social rapport. The more people they butter up, the higher they feel their social standing will be. They use this as banked social currency that they can later withdraw from. Perhaps one day when someone crosses them in some way, they will call on those around them to ostracize that person, even if that other person was morally superior and calling out the social banker's bad behaviour. Alternatively, they might be too lazy to accomplish tasks, and will call on people to help them, not because they are incapable, but because they are lazy. They spend lots of time crafting the perfect social image, but they are completely vacuous people. If you call on them for anything that takes real effort they will have an excuse why they cant help you every time. Their morals will likely be very flexible, but they will portray themselves to be paragons of morality. The obsession comes from deep insecurity and these people can't be trusted.