Studying human traits

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My Dad once said to me that he is happier to study humans than he is to be human. We find the social behaviours of others interesting, but we don't really like interacting with people to a large degree. We prefer to learn about things, take things apart and fix things. Things are interesting. People are interesting when they are viewed as things to be studied. When I have to engage socially with people it is alien to me. I have had to study people in order to learn how to appropriately interact with them and I'm still not very good at it. I suspect that generally people don't analyse social behavior, they just get on with it.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

It makes a lot of sense to me and you state it very well. I feel this way too, although I don't have anyone in my life to share those experiences with. I'm glad you and your father have so much in common.

I've found such analysis does help me socially, though I'm not very good in realtime I can at least figure people out in hindsight, and some NTs even value my social insight (oh the irony).

The mainliners, 90% of those I have known, do not have interests [at least nothing I can recognize] though they may have hobbies.

They do not examine their own ideas and behavior nor bother to find out who is talking to them.

They speak from a script and in living they get with the program.

Their language is phatic socialization, communicating group identity, solidarity, status, not ideas

"The unexamined life..."

It's why I majored in anthropology as an undergraduate.

I enjoy studying the traits of people around me. That's how I feel people out.

I find myself to be one who observes social interaction more than actually being in any. All throughout school, I hardly interacted with anyone but still knew everything that was going on and I knew somethings about people that I wished I didn't know. When you're the quiet guy, people think you aren't even there and they can say everything and not have to worry about you knowing anything.....wrong. I observe all and my ears tell me everything, not my mouth.

I enjoy studying people and their behaviors, it seems spend the majority of my time in school studying others.

wish I could find the link but the first post sounds something like what I read on a site about majoring in sociology. I may get a Master's in Sociology.