It's referred to as Behavioral Modeling through the recurrent (repetitive) behavioral patterns of a thing.
It is the very core of all science.
We all use it.
Only haphazardly - because we're not consciously aware of its' principles and thus, of when we are properly applying them and when we are not.
Once recognized and practiced, they become automatic.
Of course, talk of such things to someone not only unaware of such things, but with no real curiosity about them, and the result is much like what the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians not only about where he was coming, but about their ignorance in where they could only misconclude he was coming from, in their willful...ignorance.
Where he ended with saying...
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 2:15
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 2:16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
Though he could read them; they were clueless in reading him.
Because where he was looking at things from was from within the mind of Christ on things that the Spirit had revealed to his spirit.
In contrast, they were looking at things from where the natural man looks at things from, and as a result, concludes such things foolishness.
1 Corinthians 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
When you think on it, he was going by their recurrent patterns of behavior as looked at by him through the mind of Christ on things.
As when the Lord had noted that a tree is known by its' fruit.
All sciences are a Behavioral Science - the study of the connection between this thing and that over there, that together and repeatedly...begin to reveal a pattern that opens a window to the mind of another, to the person trained in such things...to its inner life; to what is going on inside that is resulting in its' external result.
As in the phrase "a pattern of corruption."
After a while, it is not too difficult to discern when someone is lying, or what have you.
Because it is just a matter of learning what to look for and then building a model of it right there on the spot each time, from the person's own patterns even as the person manifests said patterns.
Try that with your grandchildren sometime