The same behavior can mean different things when incentives change.

Actions do not carry fixed meanings. The same generosity means one thing from someone who gains nothing and another from someone with a proposal coming. The same caution reads differently when a person’s job is on the line. Reading behavior without reading the pressures around it produces character judgments that are really just descriptions of circumstance.

Before concluding what someone’s behavior reveals about them, map what they are rewarded and punished for. Ask what they would have to give up to act differently. If the incentives fully explain the action, you have learned about the situation, not the person. If the action runs against the incentives, then you have learned something real.