The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are.
When you first meet new people, their initial impression of you will be based 55% on your appearance and body-language, 38% on your style of speaking and only 7% on what you actually say.
Later:
Warning: some of the non-verbal flirting techniques outlined in this section are very powerful signals, and should be used with caution. Women should be particularly careful when using signals of interest and attraction. Men already tend to mistake friendliness for flirting; if your signals of interest are too direct and obvious, they will mistake them for sexual availability.
…Even from across a crowded room at a party, you can signal your interest in someone merely by making eye contact and attempting to hold your target’s gaze for more than one second (not too much more, though, or you will seem threatening). If your target maintains eye contact with you for more than one second, the chances are that he/she might return your interest. If after this initial contact, your target looks away briefly and then looks back to meet your gaze a second time, you can safely assume that he/she is interested. If these eye contacts trigger a smile, you can approach your target with some confidence.
… (Males please note: 80% of women think that they are too fat. In one American survey, women were asked what were the three words they would most like to hear from a male partner. The most common answer was not, as expected, “I love you”, but “You’ve lost weight”. While you should not make any comment on a woman’s figure unless you know her well, this compliment might please a girlfriend or close female friend.)
… There is no need for elaborate attempts at wit: a simple twist such as “Lovely day, isn’t it?” during a torrential downpour will raise a smile if your target finds you attractive. (If your target does not find you attractive, more elaborate efforts will be no more effective.)
“I went from going for a run to being in the ambulance,” the woman said several months later in describing her ordeal. “It was like 10 minutes had passed. But it was almost three weeks.”
On Aug. 28, a Thursday, a 23-year-old schoolteacher from Hamilton Heights named Hannah Emily Upp went for a jog along Riverside Drive. That jog is the last thing that Ms. Upp says she remembers before the deckhands rescued her from the waters of New York Harbor on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 16.
Watching romantic comedies can spoil your love life, a study by a university in Edinburgh has claimed …They found fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Notting Hill often fail to communicate with their partner.
Probably because they’re too busy eating chocolate and crying in the bath.
Many held the view if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them.
Why are we spending so much money on the War on Drugs, when this is the real threat to society? (via reddit)
[F]or every 15-point increase in childhood mental ability score, the likelihood of drinking problems increased 1.38 times for women, and 1.17 times for men
Given the perils of negotiating rank, many species have evolved dramatized status contests, relying on symbolic displays of physical size and force to peacefully sort out who’s on top. Stags roar. Frogs croak. Chimps throw branches around. Hippos open their jaws as wide as possible to impress competitors.
And humans tease. Teasing can be thought of as a status contest with a twist. As humans evolved the ability to form complex alliances, the power of a single individual came increasingly to depend on the ability to build strong bonds. Power became a matter of social intelligence (the good of the group) rather than of survival of the fittest (raw strength). As a status contest, teasing must walk a fine line, designating status while enhancing social connection.
Researchers found a strong correlation between subjects’ political attitudes and their physiological responses to threat. People who showed more “blink startle” and perspiration after a threatening stimulus tended to cluster on the right politically. They advocated capital punishment, school prayer, and defense spending, and they supported the Iraq war.
… “Conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles,” Amodio’s Nature Neuroscience study concluded, “whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity, and novelty.”
It requires avid study of psychology and body language. It’s an amazing paradox—a con man has incredible emotional insight, but without the burden of compassion. He must take an intense interest in other people, complete strangers, and work to understand them, yet remain detached and uninvested. That the plan is to cheat these people and ultimately confirm many of their fears cannot be of concern. Mr Lovell draws people in by mirroring their body language. He breaks their defences by entering their physical space.
(via kottke)
By studying people’s reactions to a range of artificially-generated faces, Oosterhof and Todorov were able to identify a set of features that seemed to engender trust. Working from those findings, they were able to create a continuum: faces with high inner eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones struck people as trustworthy, faces with low inner eyebrows and shallow cheekbones untrustworthy.
(via bb)
