Who Are They?

(Profiling)

You can tell a lot about a person by their keys. Imagine the keys in the picture above have been left behind by a person of interest in a crime. You have been hired to do a profile of this person to better understand who they are, including their attitudes and beliefs. Assume that any identifying information that could lead the authorities to this person has been exhausted. All we have are the keys and whatever you can glean from them.

Your job here is to make observations, then draw inferences from those observations. This is how Sherlock Holmes solves his mysteries, by “seeing” things no one else can see and drawing conclusions no one else is able to.

Your next experience is to practice this method, not to solve a mystery, but to understand a person—and to see the limits of observations in drawing those conclusions.

Based on very little information, you need to try to describe a person who is a stranger to both you and your audience.

AUDIENCE

A nosy, curious person who is looking for insights into the subject of your study. Think of them as a client.

PURPOSE

The purpose of the writing is to catalog your observations and inferences in a way that will be understandable and accessible to your audience.

PROCESS

1. Observe.

Spend around ten minutes looking at the keys. Write down as many different observations as you can. Observations are directly observable facts, such as there are two regular keys and two car keys and one key chain. Don’t make any judgments about these observations, simply observe. While you’re observing what is there, you should also be thinking about what’s absent. What sorts of things do people put on key chains that aren’t here?

2. Draw inferences.

What conclusions can you draw based on your observations? Who is this person? What is their gender? What do they like? How old are they? What do they do (or not do) with their time? What are their attitudes and beliefs?

3. Extend inferences.

Based on those initial inferences, what other conclusions can you draw? What does this person do with their weekends? Who are their friends and associates? This will require speculation, but make sure it’s speculation grounded in observation and earlier inferences.

4. Report findings to client.

Consider an approach and format that delivers the information in a way that will be useful to your client. Be sure to be mindful of connecting your inferences to your observations so the client can appreciate your evidence. Also, they’d probably like to know how much confidence you have in your various conclusions. What do you know? What do you suspect? What’s merely possible? What’s wild speculation?

Include as much information as you can that’s still grounded in specific observations, as well as your level of confidence in each of these conclusions.

REFLECT

Those are my keys. What were you able to discover about me?

Your list of observations should include the obvious: There are two door keys, two car keys, a single key chain. The car keys are for a Toyota and a Fiat. The key chain says “Illinois” on it and has a logo, suggesting a team or organization.

You can also observe absences. There are no frequent-buyer cards, for example.

What sorts of inferences did you draw? What can you infer about someone with two car keys? What can you infer from the make of car on those keys?

Did you guess my gender (male) or age (mid to late forties)? Based on what? Did you infer that I went to the University of Illinois for college? If you did a little digging, you’d see that the logo on that key chain was discontinued more than ten years ago, which suggests it’s more than ten years old. In fact, I bought it at my summer orientation for college in 1988. What can you infer from the fact that I’ve had the same keychain since 1988?

That’s right, I’ve never lost my keys. Typing that sentence virtually guaranteed that I will now lose my keys, but it’s been a good run.

I’m married, which is why I have access to two cars, one for me and one for my spouse. This also suggests that we live in a place where day-to-day life requires a car. This has not always been the case during our marriage, but it is now.

The makes of the cars may give some clue to our socioeconomic status. (Not telling, but feel free to guess.)

Did you wonder if the keys belong to someone who can carry them in a pocket because there are so few? The lack of frequent-buyer cards could be interpreted as meaning I do no shopping, which is untrue but a reasonable inference. (I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I’m not a fan of having all my information tracked and sold by corporations.)

The point isn’t how close you get to successfully profiling me but instead to appreciate the process of making observations and drawing inferences. This will be a core part of any writing that requires analysis. Through this process, you can create ideas directly from your own experience.

REMIX

Look at your own keys. What sorts of incorrect inferences could people make about you based on correct observations of your keys? What would cause someone to make these incorrect inferences? What role would stereotyping play in their incorrect inferences?

What can be done in our observations to guard against jumping to incorrect conclusions based on stereotypes?

MAKING INFERENCES FROM OBSERVATIONS

Here is a fancy word with a fancy definition:

Semiotics: A general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.

—Merriam-Webster

In other, more simplified, words, the world is comprised of signs and signals that convey meaning. You read them constantly, often unconsciously. For example, how do you know how to turn on the hot water?

Hot is almost always on the left side of the sink, or colored red or signaled by a little H on the knob. Much of your moment-to-moment reading of signs is largely unconscious.

The “Who Are They?” experience requires acting as semiotician. It involves a process of making observations (two car keys, Illinois key chain) and drawing inferences and implications from those observations. Through the process, we create “knowledge,” information and insights that weren’t available prior to engaging in the process.

One of the skills in any writer’s practice is to see and interpret the world around them in an effort to discover things not previously known. Acting as a kind of Sherlock Holmes type, being aware of the world and asking what different signs and signals mean, will be a part of just about any writing experience.

In writing the review for the “Should I . . . ?” assignment, you may have had to make observations and draw inferences. You may have interpreted something’s meaning, or its quality, by interpreting your own observations.

But as the remix for the previous assignment demonstrates, stereotyping and something called “confirmation bias”—where we see something we expect to see—are always potential threats. Guarding against them requires practicing one particular writer’s habit of mind: openness.

Many of us will make judgments about a person’s character based on their clothing or appearance, and sometimes that may be accurate, but often we are succumbing to stereotypes, failing to look at the signals closely and critically and to guard against knee-jerk assumptions. Being able to revise an initial impression is a vital writing skill rooted in openness as a habit of mind.