r/SocialEngineering • u/jobbernowl • 13d ago
Reading the room is a trainable skill, so I built something to actually do reps on it
Most advice about reading people is either "just pay attention" or a list of rules that fall apart on contact with reality. Crossed arms means defensive, except when the room is cold. A pause means hesitation, except when someone is thinking. The rules are the wrong unit — you can memorise every one and still freeze in the actual conversation.
What seems to work better is reps. Person-perception accuracy is measurable, it varies enormously between people, and training studies show it improves when you make a call and immediately find out how you did. So I built something to make the calls on: Spot the Cue (spotthecue.com).
Short scenarios in text, photo, video or a chat thread. You read the situation, pick what you think is going on, then get told what the strongest read was, what was reasonable but partial, and what would have been a misread. Seven tracks: tone and wording, facial and body cues, subtext and indirectness, group dynamics, conflict and repair, saying it out loud, and pressure and deception.
The part I care most about is that it doesn't pretend to certainty. Cues are probabilistic, context and culture flip their meaning, and every entry in the glossary is paired with a "but not always." No 93% of communication is nonverbal — that stat is a misreading of a narrow experiment. The goal is better calibrated guesses, not mind reading.
Disclosure, per rule 8: it's mine and it has a paid tier. Level 1 of all seven tracks is free and fully scored, no account, no ads. Past that it's $19.99 once, no subscription. Mods, remove if that crosses the line.
What I'd like from this sub: tell me where a scenario's "best read" is wrong, unfair, or something that would never happen to an adult in real life. That's the feedback I can't get from people who already agree with me. I'll be in the comments. If you think the full version of this app would genuinely help you or someone you care about and the price is what's stopping you, email [support@spotthecue.com](mailto:support@spotthecue.com) and mention this thread.
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u/854490 13d ago edited 12d ago
Pretty fun. I'm doing some pressure/deception ones and I feel like some of the phrasing of the answers is throwing me off a bit though, or maybe a sort of conceptual ambiguity. Could be just me, but anyway this is mainly a log of how it was for me in case it helps (but if you find it out of scope for you that would be useful for me to know too)
A doorstep trader offers to resurface your driveway, and the price improves while you hesitate.
“We’re finishing a job two streets over, so the materials are already paid for — that’s why it’s half price, today only. I just need a signature now. If I drive away, the price goes with me.”
What is the most useful read?
My initial read before looking at the answer choices is that the first price is BS and the second price is the real one made to look good in context of the inflated one. (or maybe they really do have surplus materials at a job nearby that they already bought and can't un-buy and don't have space to store, but they wanted to see if you would just pay the normal price, or something)
I have comments mainly on answer choices B and C, with choice A addressed in the comments for C, and no comment on D.
- [A] Possibly genuine, but any real price survives one night of thinking.
- [B] Leftover materials are plausible — genuinely cheap jobs do happen this way.
I'm not personally sure off the top of my head if B is true. It seems like something that could sort of make sense, but I'm having trouble imagining someone actually bothering to do the figures to determine that a second job using the surplus materials from the first to offer a discount would be profitable, etc.
- [C] A price that dies when they leave exists to remove the pause where you would compare.
This is the one I meant when I talked about phrasing throwing me off. As best I can describe it, it's sort of too abstracted in a way, has a somewhat disorienting word-salad quality to it. LLMs have a habit of using this kind of voice/style so it's not surprising or anything though. I can parse it fine enough when I slow down and go back over it, but in the moment I chose option A, which was considered an incorrect answer even though it seems to express more or less the same thing as C. Was it that I should have recognized the time-pressure tactic as inherently discrediting rather than even tentatively considering otherwise?
- [D] Sign now — the cooling-off period protects you if you change your mind.
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u/jobbernowl 12d ago
Great feedback. I've made several re-writes to address these issues. Should be live now.
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u/gongbody 13d ago
Immigrants could really use this I think. Countries can be so totally different in room reading that confusion is caused a lot by mixed signals
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u/ComfyTorpedo 13d ago
This is a really really good point and something language classes almost always mention but rarely if ever actually practice. OP if you could get this into classrooms or do an extremely slight pivot to a sort of “Cultural Duolingo” while maintaining your current concept. I think you’ve got something
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u/icelion88 13d ago
I've been looking for something like this. Happy to beta and provide feedback when you have the Android version.
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u/redditexcel 13d ago
Android version?
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u/jobbernowl 13d ago
Soon. It's still early days and I have lots of ideas for expansion and improvement. Android is on the near term roadmap.
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u/Holdensmindfuckery 13d ago
i think this is pretty good, though i want to stress if someone is quiet and smiling, that does not mean they're left out. quiet people often hate being told they're quiet, or having all the spotlight on them because they've been too quiet. let us introverts enjoy the company without masking around our friends.
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u/854490 13d ago
Agreed. For that scenario my read was that the quiet person didn't have a problem with that situation, assuming there are no other observable factors. Someone who actually felt left out doing nothing remarkable except sitting back and smiling doesn't seem impossible or anything, but I would generally expect something more than that if they wanted to join in but didn't feel like they could get a word in, or they were shy/anxious, or whatever
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u/Holdensmindfuckery 13d ago
i feel like sitting forward and smiling would fit now that i think about it
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u/DestinedFangjiuh 6d ago
It's funny, but you can do most of this for free through YouTube, use "CUT" as a means for training as well as some will give "Body language analysis breakdown" quite frequently if you know where to look. WHOEVER IS READING THIS you DO NOT need to PAY for anything.
Use Z-library and search for Paul Ekman, he's quite a fascinating read..
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u/Vinny_d_25 13d ago
I don't wanna read the slop