How to Know a Person — Chapter Two: How Not to See a Person

1. 1. The size-up is an instant judgment of someone based on appearance, which prevents deep seeing.
2. 2. Egotism is the number one reason people fail to see others, as they are too self-centered to be curious.
3. 3. Anxiety is the second reason people don't see others; internal noise drowns out external signals.
4. 4. Naïve realism is the assumption that one's own view is objective, so others must see the same reality.
5. 5. The lesser-minds problem leads people to see themselves as more complex than others, based on limited access to others' thoughts.
6. 6. Objectivism, as used by social scientists, is good for population trends but terrible for seeing an individual's unique subjectivity.
7. 7. Essentialism uses stereotypes to categorize people, assuming groups have an immutable nature and overstating differences between groups.
8. 8. The static mindset occurs when people never update their mental model of someone, even after that person has changed profoundly.
9. 9. Vivian Gornick's mother Bess was so consumed by her own grief that she never saw her daughter as a separate person.
10. 10. Both Vivian and Bess were so focused on their own case and blame that they could not get inside the other's perspective.
11. 11. Being an Illuminator is a craft requiring skills like nunchi (Korean) and herzensbildung (German), not an automatic ability.