Profiling Psychology: Predicting Human Behavior

Profiler or Polygraph? Why People Outperform Technology

Have you ever wondered why a human profiler is more effective than a machine? This article will make it clear. We’ll cover the basics of profiling, interesting facts, and where it’s used.

1. Predicting Human Behavior or Exposing the Truth

What does profiling look like in action? These days, profiling is often associated with lie detection, mainly because in recent decades, it’s been used primarily in security-related organizations. But don’t think profiling is a new concept—it originated from the idea of categorizing people back in Ancient Greece.

Its history is long and winding, and we’ll return to it. Profiling gained widespread use and recognition thanks to security professionals, especially for the task of exposing deception. Using this model, intelligence agencies began obtaining confessions from criminals, tracking down serial offenders, and countering terrorists.

For example, El Al airline staff in Israel consider all Arabs as potentially dangerous, introducing the concept of ethnic profiling—a complex issue we’ll discuss in future articles.

For Israel, a country in a constant state of war, assessing the risk level of incoming citizens is crucial. I’ve been there and observed closely: right off the plane, young armed officers check documents. These are risk assessment specialists, working even before you reach the airport building. The actual profilers are stationed inside.

In the 1970s, the FBI in the US created a special unit to analyze the behavior of incarcerated criminals and serial offenders. The goal was to apply this knowledge to find criminals still at large or to get confessions from those already in custody. The foundations and history of profiling are well depicted in the series Mindhunter.

What Is Profiling?

Let’s define profiling in light of these new insights. Many schools of psychology have different concepts, but there’s no consensus. Based on 26 years of experience, my team and I agree:

Profiling is a model whose main task—besides creating a deep psychological portrait of a person—is to accurately predict their behavior in various contexts, based on humanity’s detailed retrospective experience.

It’s not a theoretical guess about how someone would act in ideal conditions, but a precise prediction of actions in real situations. Although the method is based on scientific principles, profiling isn’t considered a science because predicting the future involves probabilities, which science doesn’t fully accept.

2. The Power of Profiling: Purposes, Goals, and Applications

In previous articles, we established that profiling has ancient roots and was most widely used in security. But it’s not just about creating a psychological portrait of a potential criminal. Profiling helps determine possible locations, predict behavior based on certain traits, and ultimately, catch criminals and obtain confessions. For example, Professor Bukhanovsky created a profile of Andrei Chikatilo and got him to confess to 56 murders.

Profiling started as categorization, was refined by security services, and today is used in a much broader and more versatile way. Modern profiling is used in any field involving communication. Where there’s communication, there’s a place for profiling—a simple and reliable rule.

Today, this approach is well-adapted and widely used in various areas of life. Here are the most popular fields where profiling is firmly established, plus some you might not expect. There are many more, waiting for talented profilers to explore new horizons.

Field 1: Human Resources

The foundation of any company or organization is its people. A good HR specialist is 50% of a company’s success. HR uses many methods and tools, but the best in the field are those who use profiling skills.

There are many HR methods—take the DISC assessment, for example, developed by William Marston and described in his book Emotions of Normal People. The idea: people act or don’t act based on how they perceive the world. Profiling doesn’t dispute this method, but relying on it alone for predicting candidate behavior or preventing burnout is hopeless. You need a system that considers many other factors.

The fast-growing IT sector is also full of specialists who sometimes lose their foundation. Major IT companies now require HR not only to recruit and support candidates but also to prevent burnout, foster team engagement, and maintain team spirit. Ambitious goals create outstanding HR managers, who truly shine when they turn to profiling psychology.

Field 2: Poker and Professional Gambling

Where better to need a profiler than at a high-stakes table? I train players to change their mindset, understand personalities at the table, read nonverbal cues, and understand both others and themselves.

Poker is no longer just a game with friends over whiskey—it’s a massive industry, like a financial system, where professional salaries reach hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. There aren’t many such pros in the world, and all of them want a skilled profiler on their team.

Detecting false notes in opponents’ voices, reading bluffs, projecting confidence or subtle disappointment—there’s a whole branch of profiling dedicated to poker.

Field 3: Marketing

If you sell anything—products, services, information—you need profiling. It will make your life easier and ensure steady growth in your client base and profits.

I could say profiling was made for marketing, but you already know that’s not the case—though it fits perfectly. Any modern manager should swap out their sales books for profiling literature (see the book list below) and watch the results. Your target audience and customers will be an open book. After just a few sentences, you’ll see not a closed-off client, but a well-studied encyclopedia with instructions and pictures. All that’s left is to make an irresistible value proposition. That’s what profilers specialize in.

Field 4: Personal and Family Psychology

This is called autoprofiling. Start by understanding your own feelings and reactions. Type yourself, learn how to befriend yourself. It’s a powerful step where people learn to rely on themselves.

This method is great for building relationships with children—whether toddlers or teens, they’re all different, and parenting books often aren’t enough. Parents should swap their bedtime reading for books on profiling. Which ones? I’ll share in a future article.

It also applies to couples. Profiling can save many families on the brink of divorce. Psychologists recommend couples take steps toward each other; profiling takes each by the hand and helps them move forward together.

Field 5: Business and Negotiations

Once entrepreneurs experienced the benefits of working with profilers, business and profiling became inseparable. A profiler is like a positive “gray cardinal” for any organization, working behind the scenes to bring real value. They become an indispensable support for management and staff.

Remember, you’ll never see a true profiler stirring up trouble or spreading negativity. Even if they’re conducting an exit interview, the departing employee will leave feeling positive and ready for a new chapter.

How do top profilers change professionally? They become more empathetic and can’t argue with anger or shouting. Profilers are compassionate, understanding, and genuinely like people. It’s as if they’re surrounded by an invisible cloud of kindness. In this atmosphere, people tell the truth, confess to crimes, and do what’s needed—no polygraph or force required. Just because they’re dealing with a good person.

Having a profiler on your negotiation or business team inevitably increases profits, making every business interaction more effective. There are countless areas for profiling—listing them all would take thousands of points. A profiler is a universal specialist who can solve a wide range of tasks in any field, bringing harmony and boosting team effectiveness.

3. The “Mind-Reading Machine”?

What are the foundations of profiling?

Remember the movie Guest from the Future? The pirates chased a mind-reading device, thinking it would let them conquer the world. They weren’t far off. But no device can replace a human…

The human mind is a unique, subtle, and powerful tool, able to pick up micro-movements, use multiple techniques at once, and apply psychology in the moment. With proper training, reading someone’s thoughts becomes quite possible. Profilers live among us—their stories are in the media, literature, and movies. Take Soviet spies, for example.

How do you gain enough trust to extract vital information, obtain state secrets, or even recruit people on the enemy side? What tone, words, and content do you use to make someone betray their country, themselves, and their loved ones? Dmitry Alexandrovich Bystrolyotov could tell us a lot about this.

The archives of information obtained by Soviet spy Bystrolyotov will never be declassified, according to the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Sergey Naryshkin. Even after centuries, the most secret sources are sometimes revealed… Bystrolyotov was a unique recruiter. The tools he used are the foundation for any skilled profiler.

Profiling Complements, Not Competes

Profiling is an amazing model that, unlike many schools of psychology, doesn’t conflict with other methods. Instead, it unites the most effective, proven methodologies.

Carl Gustav Jung laid a strong foundation for profiling. The brilliant psychologist introduced and described:

• The collective unconscious
• Archetypes
• Extraversion and introversion (not to be confused with common definitions; for Jung, it’s about the source of a person’s experience)
• Personality structure

Without these, truly reading people’s minds is impossible. Jung concluded that the unconscious controls the conscious. That’s why simple categorization isn’t enough.

Alfred Adler added to profiling with his discoveries about human complexes, such as the inferiority complex. Working with complexes is crucial for profilers, but that’s a topic for another article.

The behavioral approach defined the psychological present in detail. Profiling is built from important psychological discoveries and related fields. I continue to expand the model’s instrumental, scientific, and practical base every day.

4. Basic Methods and Foundations of Profiling

How does a profiler interact with others? Primarily through profiling conversations or interviews. They use many operational tools, nonverbal cues, and conduct psychodiagnostics, but the main method is direct communication. Words are the oldest tool and the profiler’s main method. A true specialist solves problems without a gun—just with the power of words.

I love to talk about my teacher and, fortunately, friend, Valery Vladimirovich Korovin. A retired colonel and the country’s top polygraph examiner, he got the most confessions not with a polygraph, but in the smoking room. A skilled profiler and highly emotive person, he easily wins people over. You can’t help but tell him the truth.

A Notorious Example: The Chikatilo Case

As mentioned earlier, Chikatilo was caught at a crime scene, but it wasn’t clear if he was the serial killer or just a one-time murderer. He stayed silent for 10 days, withdrawing into himself—a defense mechanism for people like him. The investigation team tried everything and was losing hope when Professor Bukhanovsky entered. In just minutes, he delivered a targeted message tailored to Chikatilo’s ego complex and personality traits:

“Think about it, Andrei Romanovich, if you keep silent, no one will ever know or remember you. Tell the truth, and the whole country will know your name.”

Chikatilo wrote for 12 hours and confessed to 56 crimes. That’s all you need to know about the power of profiling, friends.