This guy has figured out how to be more popular! Image by Askif Akbar
In yesterday’s post I gave you some tips from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Power of Persuasion, on how to be more popular by getting people to like you.
I’m going to continue with that today in hopes both us can be more confident.
So, I want to go through a couple more tips on how to be more outgoing by getting people to like you…
The first one of these is not particularly encouraging to a guy like me who isn’t all that good looking…
Cialdini says:
Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence. Furthermore, we make these judgements without being aware that physical attractiveness plays a role in the process.
Is it just me, or does that second part surprise the heck out of you?!?
Not only do we like good looking people quicker and assume they have all kinds of great qualities they might not even have…
We don’t even know we’re doing it.
Wow!
Well, there are two things we can do to make this work for us… One, we can try to be more objective about someone when we find them attractive, knowing that we are most likely giving them WAY too much credit.
And two, we can be better looking ourselves so that people automatically like us more.
Like I said, I’m not that good looking. And I don’t have money I’m willing to spend on plastic surgery, but here are a few things I do to be better looking. And I’d recommend you do these too.
First, I’m well groomed. That means I get rid of “mutant hairs” on my shoulders and back… along with this one disgusting hair that insists on growing out of a little mole on my stomach. Ick.
I’m also getting older, which isn’t terribly fun… so I have to deal with ear hair now. Never in a million years did I ever expect to have hairs growing out of my ears. But… it’s there, so I pull them.
My eyebrows are well manicured. And I get rid of any and all nose hairs that stick out. That’s another thing I never used to have a problem with, now it seems like once a week I have to check. It sucks. And it HURTS when you pull them!
Second, and this ought to go without saying, I’m clean and smell nice. Personally, I don’t wear scented anything… no cologne, smelly deodorant, or strong soap. I like to smell like I naturally smell.
The third thing I do to be more popular is to keep my fingernails trimmed short. If you’re a guy, I would recommend this because short nails are easier to keep clean, and you are much less likely to scratch the girl you’re intimate with.
And finally, I take care of my little personal issues. Like I have spots in the middle of my hands that dry out, so I put lotion on my hands. And if you know what that’s from, I’d appreciate it if you sent me a message and let me know what’s going on with that!
The second thing Robert Cialdini says in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion that we can use to be more popular is that we tend to go along with people who dress like we do.
We are more likely to help those who dress like us. In one study, done in the late 1970’s when young people tended to dress in either “hippie” or “straight” fashion, experimenters donned hippie or straight attire and asked college students on campus for a dime to make a phone call. When the experimenter was dressed in the same way as the student, the request was granted in more than two-thirds of the instances; when the student and the requester were dissimilarly dressed, the dime was provided less than half the time.
Ummmm… this isn’t good news for me either.
Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
It does explain one of the reasons I might have been so UNpopular in high school though, and what lead me on this quest to learn how to be more popular and outgoing.
See, my family was broke. We hardly had money for food, much less new clothes. I NEVER had the current brands or fashions, and I suppose that contributed to me being an outcast back then.
Even now, I don’t dress “normal”. But, I’m still well-liked. I could dress normal, I mean I have fashionable clothes in my closet. But I think it pisses me off so much that I was judged for my clothes when I was young that I purposely don’t wear fashionable clothes and take pride getting people to like me IN SPITE OF the way I dress. Yes, I’m an jerk. But who doesn’t like to prove all those people in high school wrong?
Most days, no matter what I’m doing, I dress in 1 of 3 pairs of shorts I got in Thailand 5 years ago. All three pairs are honestly more patches than pants.
I wear between 15-20 anklets, bracelets and necklaces on any given day. Very different.
No one I’ve ever met dresses like me. And I meet people who are dressed WAY different than me and they like me, so I think that if you have other skills, you don’t need to dress like the people you’re trying to be popular with. Not that it would hurt though.
This wraps up how the principles in Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion, can be used to be better liked and answers a few of your questions about how to be more popular.
Tune in next post in this ongoing series on how to be more outgoing and how to be more popular. We are going to make people notice, like and want to be with you!
Also, I put together an entire program for you on how to get people to like you, become more confident, and overcome shyness. I give you the things that worked the best for me to go from a shy, awkward, and lonely guy to become happy, outgoing and confident. My guess is that it will work for you too. Click here for the secrets to being liked and how to be more outgoing..
