The Challenge
Now, it’s time for the actual checkout. You show your interest by examining the person, which is done by squinting a little, tilting your head. You’re checking him or her out. This is pretty much all we men have in our arsenals. If nothing has happened yet, we have to make a conscious decision to approach the person we’ve been unconsciously checking out.
Women still have another weapon at their disposal. It is as devastatingly simple as it is devastatingly deadly. Again, if you’re a woman and can try this out while you’re reading this, do it. You’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Here’s the position: head and eyes go into checkout position as mentioned. Squint, and slant your head. Then place one hand on your hip, which you raise a little. That’s it. Now, as a woman, you’re no longer being submissive, you’re posing a real challenge. What this pose says is “I’m curious about you, but I wonder if you’ve got the guts to walk over here?” It doesn’t get any more direct than that.
Remember, these are still unconscious techniques you’re using. So, without knowing that you’ve done anything to encourage it, suddenly that person is standing there, right in front of you, wanting to talk to you. And you have no clue how it happened. You are also quite likely to be asked if you know each other, since you seem so familiar to him or her. Do you know whom you remind that person of? Himself or herself, of course, because you’ve been standing there following the person’s body language!
Your Position Signals Trust and Interest
If you’re standing (or sitting) facing directly toward each other, this is a strong sign of attraction, since you’re literally exposing your vulnerable sides to each other. Usually, we stand at a 45-degree angle to each other when we speak, because facing each other directly is simply too intimate. Any animal knows the sides are the better protected parts of our bodies, thanks to our rib cages. Also, by standing at an angle, the body presents a smaller “target area” to any threats. To face each other directly, you either have to trust each other greatly, probably because you know each other well, or else doing so is a sign of attraction. For the same reason, it can be threatening if somebody approaches you from straight ahead. If you stand too close or tower over somebody, you will be perceived as intrusive and aggressive rather than humble and vulnerable.
If you turn straight toward somebody who isn’t comfortable with it, the discomfort will often be expressed by that person touching his neck, collar, or necklace. It’s a sign telling you to either back off physically or change the subject of conversation. You’re either standing too close or talking about something that makes him uncomfortable.
Now that you’re standing there, facing each other and talking, the technique of flirting takes on more nuance. You can use this opportunity to pay attention to the other person’s unconscious behavior. Are the pupils dilated and signaling interest? Has his or her body language opened up, so there aren’t any hands or anything else getting in the way between you? Also, make sure he or she is well rooted to the floor with both feet, and not about to head off somewhere. Now is the time to use the methods for rapport that you couldn’t use when you were still some distance apart. If you do it the right way, you’ll soon be taking turns following and leading each other’s body language.
Let’s imagine that your conversation has continued, and a little later, you’ve moved to a couch, or a chair each in the worst case. The same thing still goes. You keep dismantling any barriers between the two of you. Sitting cross-legged is a bad idea, even though it’s a grounded position. The reason for this is that the leg also becomes a barrier. So both feet should be planted on the floor. Another barrier that is often removed at this point is glasses, which are either removed or pushed up to the forehead.
As you know, an interested person is alert, energetic, and often leans forward a little when you speak to him or her. Signs that somebody is uninterested, restless, or nervous can be gestural slips, which you read about earlier. If he or she is enjoying your company, hands and feet should be still and relaxed, not fidgeting or tapping on the floor. Pay attention to hands being moved to the face. Remember what you read in chapter 7 on lying.
Sensual Stuff
A new sign that will start appearing now, if it hasn’t already, is discreet touching of oneself or an object, like a wineglass. Depending on how your relationship has developed, this could be a sign that he or she is feeling a little cornered, and needs to confirm his or her sense of reality. In those cases, the person will probably touch his or her neck, and his or her eyes will roam. But if the relationship is still good, these are no less than unconscious, symbolic caresses meant for you. A related behavior is putting things in your mouth, and I don’t mean potato chips or cheese sandwiches. Now we start sucking on and chewing on olives, ice cubes, chocolate, or anything else that can be moved between our lips in a reasonably sensual way. We will often also start licking them (our lips, not the olives) a little. It might all sound a bit silly, but this is no joke. Who told you our unconscious minds are all sophisticated and stuff? There wouldn’t really be any need for it, since we don’t notice these things anyway. Watching somebody we’re attracted to eating or drinking is almost an unbearable turn-on for our unconscious minds.
And as if that weren’t enough, we decide to loosen up a little at this stage. Men will loosen their ties and unbutton their shirts, or remove their jacket or sweater, and women will let their hair out or at least start swinging one of their sandals off of their toes. What we’re actually doing is beginning to get undressed. We aren’t aware of anything besides having a very nice time at the moment, but the mating dance has just begun in earnest.
A True Story
I fully understand if you’re having a hard time accepting that the behavior I am discussing is still unconscious. Surely you’d never miss such blatant attempts at seduction? Maybe you wouldn’t if you were silently observing the person in question. But remember, you’re busy thinking about the things you’re talking about, listening to the other person, adding your own clever comments, and showing off your best behavior. There simply isn’t time for you to think about these things consciously, especially when you’re not quite sure what they mean.
Let me tell you a story that illustrates how unaware we really are.
A year or so ago, I was lecturing in a luxurious holiday resort in the Caribbean. As the weather was very hot, clothing was casual, sometimes minimal, even in the more-formal contexts. One night, we were at an outdoor restaurant, having dinner. A man who has become famous thanks to his impressive physique and size walked in and sat down. His presence was impossible to ignore, which was obvious, as all the guests gave him a quick look before returning to their meals.
A minute or so after he sat down, a young woman walked up to him. She had long, bleached hair, was about twenty-five, and was wearing a tank top with a lot of cleavage, a short skirt, and sandals. I was sitting too far away to hear their conversation, but I was able to study their behavior. He turned his chair away from the table to be able to face her directly, which I felt was a nice gesture, telling her he was prepared to give her his time and attention. (Of course, his size made it impossible for him to expose weakness or vulnerability to her in this way, but more important, he posed no threat either, as he was sitting down while she was standing up.) They spoke for two or three minutes.
During their conversation, here’s what she did: first, she placed one hand on the table she was standing next to. Since the table was quite low, this means she was leaning to the side, supported by her arm, which made the arm a useful support for pushing her chest up and out toward him. Twenty seconds later, she moved her hand on the table forward a little more, making it necessary for her to lean forward slightly, which positioned her cleavage directly in line with the seated man’s face. After another twenty seconds, she began touching her neck, but not in the nervous way. This was the sensual way: she casually dragged her finger in a caress along her necklace and the collar of her tank top. Half
a minute went by like this, before her right sandal was removed, and she started rubbing her naked foot along her left leg. Up … and down. Up … and down.
I almost choked on my salad. How was he going to respond to this? Well, he did the exact opposite of what she was doing. He looked everywhere but at her, gave brief answers to her questions (I could see this even though I couldn’t hear their words), tapped his feet on the floor, and kept moving his hands around. After a while, she had to give up, and she went back to her own table.
When their conversation had ended, I couldn’t resist. I sought the woman out as soon as I could, and asked her what they had spoken about. She had perceived their conversation as strictly business related. As it happened, he had purchased a product from her about a year earlier, and she wanted to know if he was happy with it. She was deeply shocked when I described her behavior and the obvious attraction she had been displaying. She claimed that she had no memory at all of doing all the things I mentioned, and was quite concerned that she might have made an unprofessional impression. I believed her.
I also had a quick talk with the man. I began by saying that I understood that this must happen to him all the time and that it must be bothersome for him. He responded by admitting that this was true, but he told me he made an effort to give everybody the time they needed and to be nice and polite to everybody. When I described the behavior he had just displayed, he was as upset as the woman had been just before. He was worried he might have made a disrespectful or unsympathetic impression, and asked me if I thought he should apologize to her. I told him he probably didn’t need to, since neither one of them had been aware of their own behavior, let alone the other’s.
They were both textbook examples of everything you’ve been reading about here, and they really had no clue about it. At least not consciously. If I had asked their unconscious minds, I would almost certainly have had completely different answers. But they were both consciously convinced that what happened was that they had a brief, business-related conversation. Keep that in mind if you feel nervous about following somebody’s body language; you can get away with a lot more than you might think.
When Interest Wanes
Back to you and the couch (or chairs). If, by this point, you’ve grown tired of the other person and have had enough, I’m sure you can guess which changes that boredom will cause in your behavior. You simply start making bad rapport. Barriers are re-erected: eyeglasses go back on, arms will start crossing the body (for instance, by holding things in your hands), legs are crossed under the chair, making the feet come off the ground, or are crossed at the thighs. The body tenses up. Eye contact is broken. Something a lot of people do is to suddenly seem more interested in flicking invisible dust away, or rubbing imaginary stains out of their clothes. Pretty soon the other person will get up and tell you she has just seen somebody she needs to talk to, excuse herself, and leave. When you return to your friends, and they ask you where you’ve been, you tell them you’ve spoken to somebody you didn’t know for a while. That’s it. The fact that you’ve just been dancing sexy yes–sexy no for half an hour is nowhere in your memory.
Everything I’ve been describing happens without a word. As you can guess, it’s far from impossible to display this behavior, without even being particularly subtle about it, while having a completely commonplace conversation at the superficial level. But just think how effective it could be if your words matched your actions, too! You can make yourself dangerously irresistible by practicing your rapport and wordless communication.
In the earlier example, I have described a set of behaviors that can all be displayed, one after the other, in a single encounter, but of course this could go on for longer, or even just include a single sign or so each time. Like with two coworkers at the office: everybody just knows there’s something going on, no matter how they deny it themselves, despite their every meeting at the copying machine being a cornucopia of exposed wrists, moistening of lips (moistening, not licking), and facing each other directly. This can go on forever, and if nothing else happens, it’s very likely that it will.
Human beings are social animals. We require acknowledgment from others and to be permitted to acknowledge other members of our pack, to be able to feel good. It doesn’t have to be more than that, unless you want it to, of course.
* * *
Up until this point, everything in this book has been about learning to observe the unconscious signs other people display, and learning about your own signs. You’ve been able to use this knowledge in various ways, but the basic premise has always been the same. Now we’re ready for a new approach. In the next two chapters, you will learn techniques for real influence. The influence you can achieve by leading somebody into rapport, for example, is of a rather passive kind. In the next chapter, we’re going to touch on actively influencing the opinions, ideas, and emotions of others—all things a good mind reader needs to be able to do.
Many of these techniques, like “hidden commands” from chapter 9, or “anchors” from chapter 10, can be used to improve other people’s situations. Some of the other techniques are included to help you protect yourself, as you are under a constant barrage of sophisticated tricks that people play on you to get at your thoughts, usually for commercial or political ends.
9
Look Deep into My Eyes …
METHODS OF SUGGESTION AND UNDETECTABLE INFLUENCE
In which you learn about how your thoughts are
affected directly by others, and you make a deal with Spider-Man.
To make people feel or act in a certain way is not to manipulate them. —ALVIN A. ACHENBAUM, MARKETING EXPERT
The quote here comes from something Achenbaum said in a hearing with the US Federal Trade Commission, sometime in the 1970s. The Trade Commission was becoming a little concerned about the market forces’ ability to influence people. Either Alvin was a very foolish man, or, and more likely, he was using vacuous speech in the way you read about in chapter 7 on lying. Of course, making people feel or act in a certain way is “to manipulate” them.
What Achenbaum is objecting to is the negative value we tend to attach to the word “manipulation.” All it’s actually about is being able to influence somebody else enough to cause change in the person’s behavior, and the value of the change ought to determine the value of the action. Change for the better is positive, and change for the worse is negative.
I suspect Achenbaum unconsciously valued the term in a negative way and was in fact referring to the negative value, not the actual term per se. And in the end, it’s actually up to you whether manipulation, or influence, is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. You’ve already gained a great insight into how we constantly influence and manipulate each other through our behavior. Sometimes we don’t need more than a friendly “Hello!” and a smile to influence somebody else to give us a friendly greeting in return. Other times, it’s a lot more complicated. I think you’ve also started to realize that since we do this all the time, whether we want to or not, there’s only one way to make sure you’re not influencing or manipulating somebody in a bad way. You need to know what it is you’re doing so you can decide when to not do it or choose to do it differently.
The techniques that you’ve learned so far have mainly allowed you to identify the emotional states of others, giving you clues to how they feel and what they’re thinking. As you’ve seen, these techniques can also be used to influence the mental processes of others, causing a change of mood in somebody by influencing the person’s body language, establishing good relationships in meetings, or making somebody like you. But considered as techniques of influence, they are quite passive, as I’ve mentioned. Now I want to teach you more-active techniques of influence. But I also want you to remember something: our goal is, still, to influence others in ways that help them achieve insight and emotional states they may have had a hard time reaching on their own. We’re always looking to help people achieve their absolute best and most use
ful state of mind. And that is all we should be looking to do, because influence is a double-edged sword. All of the techniques I am teaching you now, to enable you to help people, can also be used to destroy people completely. And this is an absolute no-no. If I find out you’re using these things in the wrong way, I’ll come after you with a big stick. I’m serious. As Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben put it:
With great power comes great responsibility.
Subtle Proposals
Suggestions to Our Unconscious Minds
To use suggestion means to plant opinions, images, and thoughts in other people’s minds without them being conscious of it. They believe that the new idea comes from them, whereas in fact they’ve had their perception of reality manipulated by someone else. The media in general, and advertisers in particular, use this technique a great deal. The editors of a large daily newspaper were well aware of these methods when they used the slogan “Who formed your opinions?” in their advertising for several years.
The Art of Reading Minds Page 15