Timothy Leary on Interpersonal Reflexes:

"ROUTINE REFLEX PATTERNS: During any one day the average adult runs into a wide range of interpersonal stimuli. We are challenged, pleased, bossed, obeyed, helped, and ignored on an average of several times a day. Thus, the person whose entire range of interpersonal reflexes is functioning flexibly can be expected to demonstrate appropriately each of the sixteen interpersonal reflexes many times in any day.

There are, however, many who do not react with consistent appropriateness or flexibility. One might respond to the pleasant as well as the rude stranger with a disapproving frown. Another might smile in a friendly fashion. If we study an extended sample of a subject's interactions, an interesting fact develops. Each person shows a consistent preference for certain interpersonal reflexes. Other reflexes are very difficult to elicit or absent entirely. It is possible to predict in probability terms the preferred reflexes for most individuals in a specific situation. A small percentage of individuals exist who get "others" to react to them in the widest range of possible behaviors and who can utilize a wide range of appropriate reactions. Most individuals tend to train "others" to react to them within a narrowed range of behaviors, and in turn show a restricted set of favored reflexes. Some persons show a very limited repertoire of two or three reflexes and reciprocally receive an increasingly narrow set of responses from others."

- Timothy Leary, Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality