You’re already seated at the table, adjusting your napkin, checking your phone. Then-he walks in.
Glasses, red rose, just like his picture. But something feels off.
The way he scans the room, taking his time before acknowledging you. The way he walks-deliberate, slow, like he’s evaluating his audience. The way his eyes flick over you, not with warmth, but with something harder to place. A tight feeling creeps into your stomach before he even speaks.
Then-confirmation.
“Why did you wear that dress?” he says.
Your stomach drops. He clicks his tongue, pulls out the chair, picks up the menu.
Vibe check. And that’s the only check happening tonight-you’re not staying for dinner.
What just happened? Before he even said anything, did you feel his energy, or did you just recognize the signs?
Can We Measure "Energy" in Social Interactions?
We talk about feeling energy in social situations. We say, "I don’t know, something just felt off." But what does that actually mean?
Chelsea Handler recently asked on the We Met at Acme podcast: “Why can’t we measure energy when we can measure everything else?”
Maybe because "energy" isn’t a mystical force-it’s our brain recognizing patterns in behavior, but we have not come up with the right tool to measure it-yet.
Social Energy = Pattern Recognition
If “energy” is just behavior, how do we learn to recognize it?
Behavioral science calls this covert behavior, which is internal thought, emotional reactions, and pattern processing that happens beneath the surface.
B.F. Skinner described thinking as "behaving which automatically affects the behavior and is reinforcing because it does so” (Skinner, 1957, p. 438). In other words, our thoughts are private behaviors shaped by reinforcement history.
Psychologist James M. Johnston, in his book Radical Behaviorism for ABA Practitioners (2021), expands on this: Covert behavior requires little effort and avoids social consequences. That’s why giving someone the cold shoulder is easier than telling them outright how you feel.
Why Are Some People Better at “Reading Energy”?
Some people walk into a room and just know. They can tell the mood, the social dynamics, and the power structure within seconds.
Is this intuition or just experience?
Social fluency comes from exposure. The more varied social environments you’ve been in, the better you get at reading people.
Trauma survivors are experts at this. If you grew up in an unpredictable environment, your brain became hyper-attuned to micro-behaviors because your safety depended on it.
That’s why "empaths" aren’t mystical-they’re just highly trained.
Can We Quantify “Vibes” Scientifically?
We measure body language, tone, voice inflection, and response time-so why haven’t we measured vibes or energy yet?
Maybe because we’ve never objectively defined "vibes" in behavioral terms.
What if we created a Social Energy Score based on measurable behaviors like:
Posture shifts
Eye contact frequency
Tone changes
Social pacing
If we can measure vibes, can we train ourselves to improve them?
Are We Feeling Energy? Or Are We Predicting Behavior?
So the real question isn’t: “Can I feel someone’s energy?”
It’s: “Am I unconsciously reading their reinforcement history?”
If we can define "vibes" in behavioral terms, we can predict them, train for them, and even improve them.
Maybe energy isn’t something we feel-it’s something we’ve learned to see.
References
Johnston, J. M. (2021). Radical behaviorism for ABA practitioners. Sloan Publishing.
Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. Appleton-Century-Crofts.