By internal architecture, what I mean is, when someone talks to me, what I notice first are the supporting beams propping up their words: the cadence and tone and desire behind them. I hear if they are bored, fascinated, wanting validation or connection. I often feel like I can hear how much they like themselves.
I hear the speed at which they metabolize information and the nature of their attention. Attention falls on the spectrum of jumping bean to steady stream. Where it falls depends on a person’s nature, and also how much they want to be in that conversation. Someone’s quality of attention is evident from the questions they ask (how much they diverge from what the speaker is saying), if their gaze is wandering elsewhere, if they are fidgeting, restless. The outlier is dissociation,
I can see how much someone accepts themselves by looking for intense distortions in the way they are interacting with the world. Find the range in how they treat people; if there is a split difference in their stance towards people they admire, and people they look down on. I never met a person who looked down on others and unconditionally accepted themselves. For people who are self-accepting, it is usually less the case that some people are treated like they are golden and others like they are cursed. They may still have preferences to engage with some people over others, but their baseline patience and goodwill does not fall and rise intensely.
It is easy to spot the person in the room who thinks they are better than everyone. It is the person uninterested in giving any of their attention, the genuine and open-ended kind, to anyone else. This is also painful to see, because they often cannot see their own misery, how unpleasant the world is if no one is good enough to be loved.