Rules of the Game (32 page)
Authors: Neil Strauss
Select the areas in which you ranked yourself the lowest and work on those today, using the material and exercises already provided.
The final dash to get a date begins next week, so make sure you're caught up.
Get a Lifeline
If you still haven't received a phone number, that's okay. One of two things is probably happening.
The first is that you've hit a sticking point. If so, it's time to get a helping hand. Go to www.stylelife.com/challenge and enter the Challenger forum. Start a thread there with the title “Sticking Point.” Discuss the specific area where you're having trouble, providing as much detail as possible. Using the advice you get from coaches and fellow Challengers online, make four more approaches today.
The second possibility is that you've just been reading the book and haven't been doing the field assignments. Shame on you.
If you have already received a phone number or been on a date, don't just sit there and gloat. Go out and make four more approaches as well. Practice makes perfect.
Start Persuading
Now that you know what works when meeting women, it's important to understand why these techniques work, so that you can best respond to the fluctuations, surprises, and unexpected circumstances that occur in nearly every social situation. So turn to your Day 23 Briefing, read the book report on
Influence
by Robert Cialdini, and fill in the blanks.
In
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
, psychology professor Robert B. Cialdini examines the shortcuts that people use to make decisions, then distills the tactics of persuasion to six key psychological principles.
Cialdini's focus is on sales and advertising. However, his principles help explain not just what makes people buy a particular car or brand of soap, but also how people make decisions about each other.
Below is a brief summary of Cialdini's principles. Each has scores of applications to the process of creating attraction. For example, the principle of social proof explains why women are more attracted to men who are accompanied by other women than men who are alone. After each principle, write down at least one practical way you could employ it to improve your game.
A word of warning: These are powerful principles, and they should be used to appeal to the nobler side of people, not to their weaknesses. Steer people in the direction of their own best interests, not just yours.
This is the principle of majority rule: If a lot of people are doing something, others tend to believe it must be the right thing to do. As Cialdini explains, “One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.”
Social proof is particularly persuasive, he notes, when the person trying to make a decision is uncertain or in an unclear situation. It's also more powerful when the individuals we're observing are people we relate to or believe are just like ourselves.
APPLICATION:
Perhaps the most obvious of them all, the principle of liking holds that we're more inclined to agree to the requests of someone we know and like.
Cialdini cites several factors that produce liking. These occur when someone has a similar fashion style, background, or interest as us; gives us compliments; is physically attractive; or has repeated contact with us, especially in situations where we have to cooperate with him or her to achieve a mutual benefit.
Cialdini adds an interesting twist to this principle: “an innocent association with either bad things or good things will influence how people feel about us.” For better or worse, he continues, “If we can surround ourselves with success that we are connected with in even a superficial way ⦠our public prestige will rise.”
APPLICATION:
If people do something for us, we feel obliged to pay them back. Even “people who we might ordinarily dislike ⦠can greatly increase the chance that we will do what they wish merely by providing us with a small favor prior to their requests,” Cialdini writes.
An interesting corollary, he adds, is that in order to get someone to agree to a small request, a good tactic is to start by making a large request that he or she is likely to turn down.
APPLICATION:
