If someone is only kind when there’s an audience, you’re watching a performance, not a personality.

Kindness that requires a witness is a strategy. It comes and goes with the room, which is why it feels warm in public and oddly cold in the car afterwards, and why you keep doubting your own read on the person. Character is whatever is left when nobody is watching or counting. Private behavior is the more reliable sample.

Pay attention to how they treat a waiter, a younger sibling, anyone who can do nothing for them. Compare that with how they treat you in a group. When the two versions disagree, believe the private one.