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It wouldn’t be a Persona game without the inclusion of social stats to work on outside all the dungeon-crawling and friend-making you’re doing, and Persona 4 Golden follows in kind. You’ll be working on your Knowledge, Expression, Courage, Understanding, and Diligence throughout the year you spend in Inaba, with five rankings for each.

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In Persona 4 Golden, Understanding is tethered to your social checks, and raising it can not only boost the affinity you earn with social links, but it even unlocks a few part-time jobs as well. For a guide on how to raise your P4G Understanding, we’ve got you covered below.

What Does Understanding Impact?

Yu and Naoki Konishi speaking at Yasogami High in Persona 4 Golden

For the most part, Understanding in Persona 4 Golden impacts your speech checks. As you rank up social links, you might find that certain dialogue options are locked behind a skill check. While this block can cover any of the five social stats, it’s very often your Understanding stat being checked.

There are five ranks to the Understanding social stat. They are:

  1. Basic
  2. Kindly
  3. Generous
  4. Motherly
  5. Saintly

Additionally, there are two social links in Persona 4 Golden that cannot be started until reaching certain levels of the Understanding skill.

  • Naoki Konishi: Rank 3 (Generous)
  • Shu Nakajima: Rank 5 (Saintly)

While you can find Naoki at school, you meet Shu the first time you take on the Tutoring job. It becomes available on 5/25 but requires Rank 5 Understanding to accept.

Tutoring, though, is the only way to meet Shu. In addition to the cash payout, it will boost your Expression and Knowledge stats to work the Tutoring job.

How To Raise Your Understanding

Yu at the daycare job in Persona 4 Golden boosting his Understanding

Since it’s not quite as straightforward as Knowledge or Courage, Understanding in P4G can be worked on in a handful of different ways.

Eating At Chinese Diner Aiya (Random)

One of the easiest ways to gain not just Understanding but any social stat is by spending your rainy days eating at Chinese Diner Aiya.

There, you’ll find the Mega Beef Bowl Challenge. Finishing it requires the maximization of all five stats, but each attempt will boost three random stats.

Part-time Jobs

If you’d like to know for sure that you’re raising Understanding, though, you have options there as well: two of your part-time jobs will reward you for your work by raising your Understanding.

Both the Origami Crane Folder and Babysitting jobs can increase your Understanding.

If you finish reading The Easy Origami Book, the Understanding gain you earn from folding cranes will be permanently increased.

Pet The Cat

Any time Dojima isn’t around, sneak out of the house during the evening to pet the cat outside the Dojima Residence. Doing so will raise Understanding.

Cleaning Up After Sports Practice

Finally, anytime you agree to clean up after sports practice will raise your Understanding.

Books That Raise Understanding

There are also a few books that you can buy around Inaba that raise your Understanding in Persona 4 Golden. Each chapter of a book will take you one time slot to read, and you receive the stat boost after finishing each chapter.

Title

Chapters

Off Today

2

Witch Detective

4

Short on Cash

2

Changing Careers

2

Picross Rules!

4

Sensei's Friends

2

The Final Lesson

2

The Easy Origami Book*

3

You can finish books faster by finishing Hyperspeed Reading, which allows you to read two chapters in one sitting instead of just one.

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