Decoding Love - Andrew Trees [83]
Keep your face animated—although not so animated that you come across as crazy. Research shows that a face animated with expression is seen as more attractive than one that is devoid of emotion. This is why people with good poker faces have trouble getting dates.
Use eye contact. We’ve already discussed this, but I can’t emphasize enough how powerful this is. Eye contact can boost attractiveness, regardless of the sex. In a study conducted by psychologist Arthur Aron, total strangers were paired up and had a ninety-minute conversation in which they shared personal details about themselves. Then they gazed silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes. Afterward, they were asked about their feelings for the other person, and many of the participants admitted that they felt strongly attracted. How strongly? Some of the couples eventually married! Not bad for four minutes of eye contact.
Don’t obsess about how you look. Obsess about how you act. A recent study showed that while attractiveness, emotional expressiveness, and social skills all contributed to someone’s likability, attractiveness was the least important of the three.
If you aren’t attractive, at least try to hang out with attractive people. A study found that people sitting next to attractive people were also judged to be more attractive because of their proximity.
Show the person that you like him or her. Researchers have discovered that how much we think someone likes us has a powerful effect on how much we like them. I realize that it is somewhat disheartening to consider that we have not evolved much beyond junior high school when serious flirting involved passing a note telling someone that you liked them and asking them to check a box if they liked you, but it’s true. Studies have found, for example, that a similarity in attitudes has far less of an influence over how much someone likes you than does reciprocity (the feeling that both people like each other). And once both people are convinced that the other person does like them, it can create a positive feedback loop where increasingly positive feelings are created.
In fact, being liked or disliked tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy because it ends up affecting one’s behavior and, thus, shaping others’ perception. We act as if we are liked or disliked, and people tend to treat us in ways that fit with our behavior.
Similarity in values still counts, though, so don’t neglect that. In one study, blind dates were randomly told that they were similar or dissimilar in their attitudes toward life. Guess which couples ended up liking each other a lot more? The ones who had been told they were similar. Despite the premise behind almost all romantic comedies that opposites attract, dissimilar attitudes tend to repulse possible suitors. According to a 1986 study, people who said nothing were rated significantly more likable by the speakers than people who expressed dissimilar attitudes.
If you do find yourself attracted to someone with dissimilar attitudes, make sure that you laugh at his or her jokes, because humor plays a powerful role in attraction. Researchers led students to believe that an unseen stranger was 90 percent similar or dissimilar. The students read a joke to the stranger over an intercom, and the stranger either laughed or offered a neutral response. The result? Laughter proved far more important than similarity. When the students’ attraction to the stranger was later measured, the 90 percent dissimilar person who laughed at the joke was seen as more attractive than the 90 percent similar person who didn’t.
Be choosy, but not too choosy. Let me be a little more precise. You should send out signals that you are choosy but not toward the person you are trying to attract. Several studies were unable to find evidence to support the idea that playing hard to get is a successful strategy. While people like choosy partners, studies show that they only like them when they are choosy with others, not with themselves. In one study, men and women were presented