I find these threads fascinating.
Due to my own history I’ve looked into what sets off our reactions like this and there’s considerable research on it.
We may think there isn’t anything there that we’re reacting to but often it’s there but subconscious.
Micro expressions, changes in body odour, body language, minor linguistic tics... all may be very subtle but enough to get our hackles up!
It’s happened to me a few times when as soon as I’ve met someone I’ve straight away gone “nope! Don’t like you!”
And I’ve been proven right almost every time, none as extreme as some here but they’ve variously turned out to be:
Con artists
Outright Thieves
Domestic abusers
Bullies
Or just fake in some way.
Oh with the exception of a local shopkeeper somewhere I lived as a child (army brat moved around a lot) who I wouldn’t even go in the shop. He committed suicide last year? Year before? Can’t remember, while on trial for molesting pre teen girls.
I have one person I’ve felt isn’t genuine who’s in one of my circles of friends and everyone else seems almost “smitten” with them and they’re described as almost saintly, yet I’ve never liked them and won’t have anything to do with them I wont even have them as a Facebook friend. Yet to be proven right on this one but I’m oddly still confident I will be despite seeming evidence to the contrary.
@Absoluteunit there’s some evidence that those who’ve experienced abuse themselves (which includes me) are - understandably - more likely to recognise other abusers, we’ve learnt the signs out of necessity. Being able to predict an abusers change of mood can be crucial. But sadly those who’ve experienced extreme abuse can go the other way and such behaviour, micro expressions etc are normalised so their “alert system” doesn’t work.
Have to say though I’ve also had the “reverse” experience where I’ve met people and instantly known they were a really good, kind, dependable person. And again I’ve been right almost every time.
The only times I ignored my “gut instincts” related to jobs and the bosses who interviewed me and offered me the jobs weren’t criminally off but they were shitty bosses and so after the 2nd time I resolved to never again ignore that instinct. My last job it was my boss’s boss who interviewed me and seemed fine so I wasn’t alerted to any issues...my actual boss was a fucking batshit cow who if she had interviewed me I’d have cut the interview short! Let alone rejected the job. I only found out after leaving the job that I was the 6th person in that role in 18 months largely because of her! The company knew but were struggling to get rid of her.
I’ve even had reactions to people appearing in press conferences about missing loved ones etc, now I know that sometimes this seems obvious as they’re invited to do the press conference because the police suspect them but thats not always the case.
There was one very odd one many years ago where this chap was appearing in regard to his missing girlfriend and the bus going to and the place/building he supposedly last saw her I had been present for both that night and they were not at all busy only a few people at either (small city hopper type bus only me and 1 other on it) and I definitely knew I’d not seen either of them there. Turned out he was lying his arse off and he’d murdered her. Was so weird because I felt like I needed to call police and say I’d been there and NOT seen them but it felt daft to report a lack of evidence? The place had cctv (buses still didn’t at this point) and the police knew before the press conference they’d not been there as it turns out but that didn’t come to light publicly until the trial months later. I was so relieved that I’d not actually “withheld” crucial evidenced. Very odd experience.
@ilovesushi even though he had his back to you, you may have noticed tension in his body plus stress/anxiety changes body odour so unless he was a pure psychopath chances are he was at least a little stressed with whatever he was trying to get away with and you subconsciously picked up on that?