The egoistic person detector

One of the benefits of moving to USA, making a decision to move into a studio despite my apprehensions, is the amazing experience of meeting with people from all different walks of life. I get to meet people from different countries, ethnicities, professions, linguistic backgrounds, age-groups. Talking to other people, and learning about them has been as boon in many ways. I not only learn about them, but also about myself.

One of the many lessons I have learned on the way, is to understand someone's personality from a brief encounter. I have noticed that everybody likes being asked about themselves. I usually ask people about them out of curiosity and many stories build from there.

Then the conversation that follows from the initial small talk defines a pattern. Typically, there are two types of patterns that I observed.

First, the non-talkers. They do not encourage communication. You ask them, they respond. They don't ask anything in return, and the conversation stops there. This acts as a sign not to badger them anymore.

The second category, obviously, is the the talkers. They generally get enthusiastic and ask a question back and conversation flows from there through the exchange of questions and answers.

Although these two types define the course of interaction in the next few minutes or hours, it does not always define their personality types. Everyone can fall into any of these categories depending on the topic, their mood, and various other intangible factors.

However, recently, I am noticing a third pattern. And I am almost reaching to a conclusion that this relates to a person's personality type. Lets dissect the third type.

These people, are not interested in asking you a question. You ask them questions. They do give you a response, but form then onward, it is all about them. Whenever their answer ends, it ends with "Ask me another question", and the cycle goes on until either time is off or the questioner does not have any questions left to ask. These people, my friends, are "egoistic people", who are not going to ask you a question, unless they consider you superior to them, and the whole conversation is going to be either about them, or about how you should fix yourself.

The moment I realized this, it was my "Aha! moment". I felt I like I found my secret detector, that I can carry all the time. Now onward, if you want to detect an egoistic person in your first meeting, just ask them a question, and sit back and enjoy the drama being unfolded. You will get your answer within few minutes.