Predicting human behavior #1

I was reading this book on the extent of the seemingly insignificant nonverbal behaviors influencing the perception of others and I thought it was interesting. I think that subconsciously, people pick up certain behavioral cues, without even knowing about people. This would lead to creating preconceived notions and “I don’t know why, but I don’t like him/her.” Usually it’s something small. For example, when you first meet a person and you don’t see them smile, you may not think a big deal of it, but later on, the subconscious will hold on to it and you may eventually find yourself thinking of sadness or depression the next time you think of this person.

It is said that we cannot be certain of the way that humans behave. I agree in the sense that one may not be able to completely determine the behavior of another in a social setting, but I was wondering if, by being more aware of body language and other nonverbal cues, could we control the cues that we subconsciously pick to consciously pick them, resulting in us being more aware of why we like/dislike a person or his/her actions, would this lead to our thought process and decision making environment becoming more objective? Would this not lead to doing things in a more logical manner, which would make it a lot easier to determine one’s behavior?

So does this mean that if we were to predict successfully the behavior of a human being, one of the requirements would be that they either feel no emotions or try very hard to think objectively? Also, does this mean that the one thing that distinctively separates us from coded machines is our emotional ability?

With this flow of thought, would it be safe to assume that our emotions are what make us unpredictable?

PS; the book I was reading is cited as below:

Book, A., Costello, K., & Camilleri, J. A. (2013). Psychopathy and Victim Selection: The Use of Gait as a Cue to Vulnerability. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 28, 2368–2383.

Originally published at https://internautofgenz.blogspot.com on May 9, 2020.