The Science of Likability: 60 Evidence-Based Methods to Radiate Charisma, Make a Powerful Impression, Win Friends, and Trigger Attraction [2019 Edition]
By Patrick King
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About this ebook
100% scientifically-proven ways to make friends quickly, turn enemies into friends, gain trust, and be flat-out likable.
Utilize the most interesting, shocking, and counterintuitive findings in psychological science to simply make people want to be around you.
The Science of Likability takes over 60 seminal scientific and psychological studies and breaks them down into real, usable guidelines and tips to create the presence you have always wanted. Every piece of advice in this book to increase your social standing and likability factor is 100% backed by in-depth, peer-reviewed research, and it goes far beyond simple common sense and intuition.
Learn how to subconsciously make yourself likable, trustworthy, and intelligent.
You can get a new haircut and wardrobe, and you even learn knock-knock jokes. But likability is something more. It's subconscious, and it's about the small signs that signal our brains to let their guards down, seek others out, and embrace them. We know what to do if we want to make someone hate us - we now also know what to do to become someone's favorite person.
Understand what makes people tick, and strategically give it to them.
- How to take advantage of people's memories for your sense of charm.
- The power of equity in relationships and friendships.
- A literal formula for "friendship chemistry."
- The real way to use eye contact to build trust.
- Why tripping and being vulnerable in front of people is positive.
- Universal definitions of charisma, wit, and humor - seriously. Universal.
Patrick King
Patrick King is a social interaction specialist/dating, online dating, image, and communication and social skills coach based in San Francisco, California. His work has been featured on numerous national publications such as Inc.com, and he’s achieved status as a #1 Amazon best-selling dating and relationships author. He writes frequently on dating, love, sex, and relationships. Learn more about Patrick at his website, patrickkingconsulting.com.
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The Science of Likability - Patrick King
Edition]
The Science of Likability:
60 Evidence-Based Methods to Radiate Charisma, Make a Powerful Impression, Win Friends, and Trigger Attraction
By Patrick King
Social Interaction and Conversation Coach at www.PatrickKingConsulting.com
As a FREE show of appreciation to my readers, I’ve got TWO great resources for you:
>> CLICK HERE For The Flawless Interaction Checklist and Better Conversations Worksheet! <<
The Checklist describes in-depth the 7 essential components to exceptional interactions and conversations between you and everyone from a stranger to your partner—and The Worksheet puts a few of those components to the test with practice exercises that will instantly upgrade any conversation.
Learn how to:
· Make people comfortable
· Connect easily in any context
· Develop killer eye contact
· Prepare for any social situation
· Appear as intuitive as a mind reader
· Never run out of things to say
· Practice and drill all of the above
CLICK HERE to download your FREE copy now!
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. How to Make People Desire Your Presence
Context-Dependent Memories
The Power of Association
The Positivity Spreader
Shut Up and Let ’Em Talk!
Chapter 2. How to Create the Foundation of Friendship
Equity Within Relationships
Similarity Breeds Liking
Three Stages of Friendship
Chapter 3. How to Act the Part
Act First, Think Later
Follow Pygmalion’s Lead
See People How They Want to be Seen
The Chemistry of Friendship
Chapter 4. How to Be Trustworthy
More Is Better
Credibility
Look into My Eyes
Chapter 5. How to Make People Lower Their Guards
Oops, I Did It Again
One Ratio to Rule Them All
Advice, Please
Convert Enemies into Friends
Chapter 6. How to Salvage a Social Situation
No Such Thing as Too Much Information
Cracking People Open
Chapter 7. How to Be Charismatic and Funny
The Speed of Wit
What’s So Funny?
Violate Me, But Only a Little Bit
Chapter 8. How to Gossip, Chit-Chat, and Communicate
Gossip as Grooming
When Yes
Means No
Summary Guide
Bibliography
Introduction
Like many college underclassmen who had no idea what they wanted to study, I chose to major in psychology.
I thought it was a good default choice because the knowledge theoretically had wide application and could transfer to any other field. After all, psychology is the study of people, and I would be dealing with people anywhere I went, right? It also didn’t hurt that I heard the vast majority of the classes had open-book, multiple-choice midterms and finals.
So I checked the box next to Bachelor of Science in Psychology
and went on with my day. It was something I devoted all of ten minutes of thought to, but in reality, I could have done much worse. Psychology has turned out to be incredibly applicable to my life, relationships, and career.
Psychology isn’t about reading minds or interpreting dreams, though that’s the impression some people may have. It’s more accurate to say that psychology is the study of why people do the things they do—beyond the obvious reasons you can see on the surface and often beyond people’s own understanding and consciousness.
This has obvious applications, such as seeing why some advertisements are more effective than others, why a child will rush to do something they are explicitly told not to do, and the plain effect on behavior that positive and negative associations can have.
But the biggest takeaway from my degree was that so many of our decisions are made completely subconsciously and without any awareness on our part. Our conscious thought follows our subconscious will, and it often isn’t until far after we act that we figure out what actually happened. We may think we are acting logically and reasonably in a situation—we may even use defense mechanisms to defend and justify our actions—but this is just our subconscious getting its way.
For example, one of the more famous experiments in psychology was called the Little Albert experiment, conducted in 1920 by the famous psychologist John Watson. It involved the eponymous baby, Little Albert, who was presented with a white rat and nothing else. He had no reaction, positive or negative. Albert had yet to be conditioned or socialized in any way regarding rats.
Next, the researchers paired the rat with a loud crashing noise, which frightened Albert and made him cry in most instances. After only a couple of exposures pairing the rat and the crashing noise, Albert was presented with the rat alone again. He reacted as if the crashing noise was also present; he had become afraid of the rat by itself. But if he could talk, he wouldn’t have been able to explain why. He just knew that anything involving the rat was bad.
He had started associating the rat with the loud noise that frightened him and wasn’t consciously aware of why he was suddenly recoiling and crying whenever he saw the rat by itself.
On the one hand, this tendency to be quickly conditioned to avoid negative situations is something that probably has evolutionary roots. If you didn’t quickly learn that furry, growling animals with large teeth were bad news, you likely didn’t stay alive too long. Regardless, Little Albert provided insight into how something seemingly so subtle and unrelated could affect people’s actions in very real ways.
If people can be subconsciously conditioned about negative associations, aren’t there ways that people can be conditioned to react positively to objects and people? What if Little Albert was conditioned to associate positive things with the rat, such as food or his favorite toy? This would make Albert rejoice upon seeing the rat instead of recoiling in horror. Actually, that was proven in 1897, before Albert was even born.
This brings us to the most famous psychological experiment of the modern age: Pavlov’s dog. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian psychologist, noted that his dog began to salivate when he anticipated a meal.
So Pavlov began to ring a bell every time he fed his dog, which caused a pairing of the two behaviors: the bell and the dog salivating. When Pavlov started ringing the bell by itself, the dog salivated as if there was actual food coming. Without any real clue as to why, the dog thought he was getting delicious bacon every time he heard the bell. Needless to say, this same effect has been replicated in humans time after time.
Little Albert and Pavlov’s dog showed us two sides of the same coin—it is possible for us to become both scientifically desired and despised. It’s probably more helpful to focus on the former, and if a bell can create a positive effect on others, there must be additional, more impactful ways of being scientifically likable.
It’s not that we are simply prone to seeing things where they don’t necessarily exist. In reality, our brains are quite malleable and adaptive, and every adjustment or association our brains see is an attempt at efficiency and energy conservation. We take shortcuts as often as possible, but we usually don’t realize it.
Actually, that’s exactly what we will seek to take advantage of in this book. My mission is to uncover the most effective, peer-reviewed psychological studies to dig deep and take advantage of what human nature can offer us. Just like our brains take shortcuts to everything else, there certainly exist shortcuts to likability and charm.
You’ll learn proven ways to make yourself endearing, likable, funny, convincing, persuasive, trustworthy, credible, and instantly magnetic. You’ll learn why we hit it off with some people but never with others; why we feel chemistry with some people and instantly mutter, Ugh, not them,
in the presence of others; and why we instinctively trust some people and check for our wallets around others.
Using these tactics can certainly be seen as fake or manipulative. I can recognize and sympathize with that perspective. Anytime you are presenting something besides the genuine you and trying to do something slightly sneaky, underhanded, or with ulterior motives, you can feel icky. This is one of the main reasons many people do not prefer sales jobs—there is usually an undercurrent of becoming someone you are not in order to reach the goal of selling something. But my experience as a social skills and dating coach leads me to a different conclusion. Not everyone is born with what you might call social or emotional intelligence, and sometimes people just need a guideline to understanding and connecting with others. It’s no different than thinking about how to prepare for a job interview or a date, and people wear makeup and dress better to make good impressions on people. Indeed, it’s no different than asking a friend for advice on, well, any interpersonal matter. It all serves the same goal.
These studies run the gamut from confirmatory and common sense to shocking and counterintuitive and everything in between. Even the common-sense studies are important because, after all, common sense is not really so common. We all live through only the perspective that our experiences show us, and what is common sense to us (for instance, being raised in a rich family and knowing how yachts work) is certainly not common sense to those without our same experiences (for instance, being raised in poverty and never having seen the beach before). Something only seems obvious to us because we have seen it in action, and then you may realize that your sense of common sense amounts to simple anecdotal evidence.
And besides, if common sense was truly common, people would generally make better decisions on a daily basis.
On the other hand, some you might flat-out deny and not believe what the studies say. But just as heliocentrism (the theory that the sun revolved around the earth instead of the other way around) was thought to be heretical and wrong, sometimes you just have to follow the documented evidence and let go of your preconceptions. Just because it is not immediately obvious doesn’t mean that the figurative dog is not being compelled to salivate.
All of that and more is The Science of Likability.
Chapter 1. How to Make People Desire Your Presence
Why do some people instantly like us while others seem to be offended by our very existence?
Is hitting it off and becoming friends with people purely a roll of the dice, or is there something more we can do to control our chances of connecting with people?
For many people, likability does seem to be a game of chance. If you happen to sit next to someone who is similar to you, and who also happens to share a hobby or hometown, then you will have something to connect over. But statistically, that can’t happen with every new friend we make, so things aren’t quite adding up. As we saw from Little Albert and Pavlov’s dog, we are more influenceable than we might assume.
People who see likability as completely organic and natural are somewhat misguided because cultivating a feeling of likability around yourself is just like any other emotion—it can be triggered, summoned, eliminated, and ultimately engineered. If we want to make someone angry with us, we certainly know what to do and how to adjust our behavior. If we want to make someone cry, we also know how to create that feeling. Likability is not much different; we push psychological buttons, but for a far more desirable outcome.
We all have specific and subtle triggers that influence the way we view others and how they view us. Most of them are minuscule, subconscious, and mired in the minutiae—but these are the details that actually make the difference. If you went into a restaurant and saw only one cockroach hiding in the corner, well, it might be minuscule but still quite important.
The first chapter of the book focuses on the small details that comprise our first impressions, an integral part of likability. First impressions run deep, are not subject to change, and are your first opportunity to be likable, so this is as good a place to start as any.
Context-Dependent Memories
Memories have long been found to be context-dependent, first by Godden and Baddeley in 1975 in their breakthrough publication "Context-Dependent Memory in Two Natural Environments: On Land