What little things have you experienced that helped you to a greater insight into how people think and behave?
For me, the best example is when I worked in a supermarket for a few weeks while in my teens. One day, I was putting out fresh eggs. The best way for me to do it was to bring out the fresh eggs on the bottom of the cart, then remove the oldest eggs from the refrigerator and stack them on the top of the cart to make room for the fresh eggs.
While I was busy doing this, I started noticing that everyone would come up and grab the old eggs from the top of the cart and take them without checking the sell-by date, assuming that if they were on the cart, they were the freshest eggs.
From this, I realized how darned easy it is to manipulate people through their assumptions. Good lesson, and I’ve never (well, rarely) used it for evil.