Psychology of Seduction

by Jesse James

  Ali was famous for feigning vulnerability. He would slouch against the ropes of the boxing ring, seemingly defenseless, as his ruthless opponent pounded away at him. Overconfident, the contender would eventually let his guard down, allowing Ali to spring to life with a flurry of spectacular blows which left his opponent sprawled on the floor.

  The scientific term for the rope-a-dope is the Pratfall Effect, originally described by psychologist-extraordinaire Elliot Aronson in 1966. According to Aronson and social psychologists, the Pratfall effect explains why attractiveness increases or decreases after an individual makes a blunder. In a famous experiment conducted at the University of Minnesota, Aronson’s team showed that small blunders increased the attractiveness of successful males, while decreased the attractiveness of average males. Aronson and his team predicted these effects by reasoning that ‘a superior person may be viewed as superhuman and, therefore, distant; a blunder tends to humanize him and, consequently, increases his attractiveness.’204

  The pratfall effect was famously applied to John F. Kennedy after his failed Bay of Pigs invasion, which didn’t seem to hurt his popularity. Hey, even a handsome, almost-superhuman President can fuck up. His fumble made him seem more human and therefore more likable. Mimi Alford and other White House interns secretly swooned. Like self-deprecating humor, apparently only successful people can utilize the pratfall effect to increase their attractiveness.

  Increase your sex appeal by occasionally showing that you don’t take yourself too seriously. If you’ve followed the advice in this book, your subject now sees you as powerful, dominant, self-confident and perhaps a little arrogant. Add a splash of imperfection. Do something stupid or clumsy, then poke fun of yourself. Perfection turns women off. They need to know that you make mistakes too - that you’re only human. Can you smile at yourself after an embarrassing blunder? She will think to herself: ‘Wow! this almost-perfect guy made a stupid embarrassing mistake and instead of becoming defensive he just laughed at himself like it was no big deal.’ You appear super-secure. Women love you more for having an imperfection (or two) than being absolutely perfect all the time.

  The higher your status and fame, the more you can (and should) use self-deprecating humor. President Barack Obama knows this well: ‘The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife.’205

  Self-deprecating humor is also used to lower one’s own social status for the purpose of friendship or alliance. By making fun of the qualities which make you superior to an acquaintance, or which make an acquaintance superior to you, you are signaling that the basis of the relationship is not status or dominance. As a means of lowering your status and normalizing with the group, laughter can prove indispensible. And this is precisely why you should avoid this kind of humor in social situations outside of a one-on-one interaction with a female.206

  Humor evolved as a group-normalizing device, a way to check one’s level of conformity against the group norm. Audiences pay professional comedians to make them laugh. But more importantly, they want someone to laugh at. Comedy routines allow members of the audience to check their group normality against the comedian’s perceived abnormality. Humor is a dangerous plaything; learn how to use it properly or risk becoming a laughing-stock.207

  Remember Amos Zahavi’s stotting gazelles? According to Geoffrey Miller and other sexual psychology researchers, humor evolved as an honest signal of intelligence. Humor, after all, is impossible to fake. You are either witty or dull. And if you’re dull, then you are probably not very intelligent.

  Miller notes that ‘humor evolved at least partly through mutual mate choice for “good genes” and “good parent” traits.’ In a 2011 study at the University of New Mexico, Greengross and Miller successfully demonstrated that intelligence correlates to humor production, which in turn translates to increased mating success. Miller concludes that ‘the human capacity for producing and appreciating humor may parallel the capacities of other animals for producing and appreciating other types of courtship displays that reliably reveal phenotypic and genetic qualities.’ In other words, funny people get the girls.208

  If humor evolved as a sexual signaling device like the peacock’s tail, we would expect to find gender differences in the production and appreciation of humor. Eric Bressler, a psychologist at McMaster University in Canada, found that men and women don’t mean the same thing when they claim to value ‘humor’ in a mate. Bressler realized that women want a ‘humor generator’ while men want a ‘humor appreciator.’ Women want a witty man. Men want a woman to laugh at their (sometimes awful) jokes.

  Men use humor to flaunt their intelligence to attract a mate or disparage rivals, while women use humor to facilitate group cohesion and social bonding. John Morreal, a professor at William and Mary College in Virginia, observes that ‘Men taunt other men with clever nicknames and insults. That isn’t something that women do. They don’t tend to play practical jokes, or engage in humor that humiliates or puts somebody down.’209

  If a woman laughs at your jokes, she is probably interested in you. A recent German study found that female laughter correlated directly to female sexual interest. In the study, male and female subjects engaged in natural conversation. The more a woman laughed at the man’s jokes, the greater her attraction.

  Humor is so popular in a mate that it even earned its own acronym in dating ads: GSOH. Women rank humor at or near the top of the list in terms of personality traits they desire in a long-term mate.

  Humor is critical to seduction psychology. Laughter elicits a positive mood and serves as an aphrodisiac. Women view humorous men as socially skilled and confident. Intelligent humor – wit – is extremely sexy as a ‘fitness signal.’ Learn it.

  I recommend studying David D’Angelo’s ‘cocky funny’ routine, which works better than self-deprecation for casual sex, especially for lower status men.

  If you can’t make a woman laugh, the joke’s on you.

  TIP: Only High Status Men Should Use Self-Deprecating Humor!

  Examples of self-deprecating jokes include:

  ‘I’m in shape. Round is a shape, right?’

  ‘I’m on that new ‘seafood’ diet. If I see food, I eat it.’

  ‘Exercise doesn’t kill you, but why take the chance?’

  ‘Do you know that feeling when you meet someone and you both just fall madly in love? Yeah, me neither.’

  Keep your shirt on, buddy. Every day at the gym, beefcakes rip off their shirts to impress the ladies. Unless you’re lounging on the beach in the heat of summer, or doing something where going shirtless makes a performance difference, showing off your ripped torso will not win you any romance. Women do not become sexually stimulated by visual cues alone. Men perk up at the mere sight of a pretty girl, while women require more than just visual stimulation. In an evolutionary context, men have little to lose, and much to gain, by impregnating almost any female in sight. Women have little to gain, and much to lose, by shacking up with random strangers - six pack abs or not.

  A young and attractive woman never lacks willing sexual partners. It is a buyer’s market in which she can choose the best available man with the best genes or other returns (read: money) on her sexual favors. If a woman were aroused by the sight of random naked males, then men could compromise her bargaining position simply by taking off their clothes. Yet the man with the biggest penis hardly represents the best available male. Porn kings do not become presidents, despite brandishing twelve inches of pure manhood. Women do not find Peter North and Ron Jeremy attractive, no matter the size of their tools.

  Females who were visually stimulated by the naked male body would also be more likely to engage in rampant affairs, thus jeopardizing the pair bond.

  The penis, in particular, did not evolve as a peacocking instrument targeted towards females. Men are so focused on female sex organs that we seem to think it works the same way for women. Think again. />
  Penis peacocking is targeted towards men rather than women. When the woman’s magazine Viva initially published nude photos of men, female readership declined. When the magazine stopped publishing pictures of naked men, female readership increased while male readership declined. Men wanted to see naked men. Women did not.

  The penis represents a status display to other men. Consider New Guinean phallocarps, large penis sheaths up to two feet in length and four inches in diameter. Males maintain a wardrobe of multiple sizes for different occasions, much like stockbrokers keep several Armani suits on hand. War dance? Bust out the twenty-four inch phallocarp.

  Do you think women are turned on by these giant phallocarps extending the male anatomy by several feet? No. But other men recognize it as a display of status and dominance.

  For a vivid illustration of the differences in what the two genders find sexually appealing, contrast the romance novel with hardcore pornography. YouJizz.com appeals to almost every man; naked, nameless female flesh engaged in a variety of kinky sex acts. Come on, what’s not to love?

  Apparently, just about everything, according to most women, whose sexual fantasies play out on the pages of ‘Gone with the Wind,’ ‘A Knight in Shining Armor’ or ‘The Bronze Horseman.’ That’s a far cry from my favorite film: ‘Pimp Daddy Midget Gets More Ass than a Toilet Seat.’

  Next time you’re raging to flaunt your manhood, remember to see women real. Be the ‘bronze horseman,’ not Ron Jeremy.

  Chapter 12

  Trembling Before the Beautiful

  ‘Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.’

  - William Faulkner

  A few years ago my girlfriend and I were trekking in a wild and remote mountain valley in Montana, picking our way slowly through a vibrant field of wildflowers, when suddenly – just a few feet away – a colossal grizzly bear rose up from the meadow. I mean, this thing was ten feet tall. It was big, hairy, mean, and staring me down. I thought ‘this is it, babe. We’re buggered.’ It was the kind of terror I feel when … when I think about saying ‘hi’ to a pretty girl. What?! How can this be? How can a pretty girl evoke the same kind of frozen primordial terror as a vicious, snarling grizzly bear?

  Most men experience real physical terror when approaching a woman they don’t know. The heart begins beating wildly, the hands clam up, and they start sweating like Mike Tyson in a spelling bee. If they finally manage to ‘make contact’ with the girl, they grope awkwardly for the right words; their smooth approach becomes an uncomfortable fumble.

  Approach anxiety is deeply embedded in the male mind. During the Pleistocene era, when humans lived in tribes on the African savannah, flirting with the wrong girl – the wife or mistress of a tribal elder or warrior – could easily lead to torture or death. In the days before wedding rings, men could never be certain who was ‘taken’ and who was available. Approach the wrong girl and you could end up with your head on a spike. Little wonder men developed a fear of approaching strange women; those who made such mistakes did not survive long enough to pass on their genes. We evolved from a long line of men who were scared shitless of women.

  To understand how this works, rewind a hundred thousand years. Most pretty young girls in a tribe were chattel property, owned by the village Chief or his warriors. Imagine a hundred men with the gumption to approach such women. Brave men, indeed – but I would love to hold a life insurance policy on each of them. Now imagine another hundred men who were too scared to approach unfamiliar women. The cowards would likely survive, and some would eventually reproduce, passing on those genes for being ‘shy,’ ‘timid’ or ‘scared’ when approaching women. Since we descended from men who survived, an innate fear of approaching girls exists deep in the mind of the modern male. Cowardice is coded into our DNA. Successful seducers learn to overcome their fear through knowledge and repetition.

  The first step in conquering approach anxiety is to understand where it comes from. Such fear is genuinely physiological, not merely psychological. Your heart starts beating, your palms drip sweat, your blood pressure shoots up. You know the fear is irrational; if you approach the wrong girl in a nightclub, you might have to apologize to her lover, or at worst throw some fisticuffs, but you are not likely to find yourself on the business end of a spear.

  Unfortunately, rational thought rarely triumphs over deep emotion, so we are not likely to overcome approach anxiety simply by understanding its origins.

  Emotions like fear are buried deep in the amygdala, a mental apparatus which evolved millions of years before the neocortex. In a dogfight between fear and reason, the amygdala always wins. For most men, approaching an unfamiliar woman is even scarier than falling off a mountain.

  The amygdala – the seat of our emotions – evolved first in mammals, followed much later by the neocortex, home to the faculty of reason. Emotions like fear perform better than rational thought when a dangerous situation confronts us, like a charging lion. Thinking takes too much time. Because emotions are more deep-seated than reason, rational thought alone is insufficient to help a man overcome his instinctual fear of approaching women.

  But people do jump out of airplanes despite their fear of heights. People climb mountains despite their fear of falling. And men approach women – every day, all the time - despite the terror of the cold approach.

  According to University of British Columbia psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron, one of the most effective ways to conquer approach anxiety is to scare the crap out of yourself. Researchers were curious whether strong emotions heighten sexual attraction. To find out, they set up a classic experiment on the 137 meter Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver in the 1970s. Hanging precariously over the Capilano river, the bridge was chosen for its fear-inducing properties. It scared people shitless. Dutton and Aron hired an attractive woman to ask men who had just crossed the bridge to participate in a study. If the man agreed, the woman asked him to write a brief story based on a picture. After completing the task, the woman gave each man her phone number in case ‘he wanted to talk further.’ Researchers performed the same experiment on a sturdier, less scary bridge. The researchers were curious what the men would do with the woman’s phone number. Would they call her or throw it in the garbage? They found that nine of the eighteen men made the call after crossing the spooky suspension bridge, while only two of sixteen men contacted her after crossing the more casual bridge. Stories written by the men crossing the suspension bridge also featured more sexual imagery. Arthur Aron explains that ‘If you want someone to be attracted to you, you may want to arrange to do something that’s a little bit exciting or scary.’ I hear there’s a bridge in Vancouver that apparently works wonders.210

  We already know that fear triggers attraction, but the interesting implication of this study is that fear also reduces approach anxiety. Men who would have otherwise been too shy (or scared) to call the female on the bridge were spurred to action by their heightened adrenaline. Dutton and Aronson’s study suggests that approach anxiety can be mitigated by bursts of fear and adrenaline. Want to become more bold when approaching women? Get your scare on.211

  CLINIC: Overcoming Approach Anxiety

  Conquering approach anxiety is possible, but requires focus and hard work. Here are ten additional techniques you can use to conquer approach anxiety …

  Slow and deliberate motion

  Adopt a slow, deliberate gait and controlled movements. Not only does this help you achieve focus and relaxation, but it shows the outside world that you are in complete control of yourself and the situation. Your speech, too, should be calm, slow, and deliberate.

  Breathe

  You need to relax. Take slow, deep breaths before and during your approach. Proper breathing will help you remain calm and focused on your work.

&
nbsp; You should practice abdominal (diaphragmatic) breathing before you approach.

  Put one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen. When you inhale deeply, the hand on your abdomen should rise higher than the hand on your chest, insuring that the diaphragm is pulling air into the base of the lungs.

  Exhale through your mouth, then inhale deeply and slowly through your nose. Imagine you are sucking in all the air in the room. Hold it for a count of seven seconds (or as long as you can, but not more than seven seconds)

  Exhale slowly and deliberately through your mouth for eight seconds. As all the air is released, gently contract your abdominal muscles to discharge the remaining air from the lungs. Remember that we deepen respirations not by inhaling more air but through completely exhaling it.

  Repeat the cycle four more times for a total of five deep breaths. Breathe at a rate of one breath every ten seconds (or six breaths per minute).

  Write down your excuses

  Write down why you are afraid to approach a particular girl. Analyze your excuses and you will usually find them to be silly.

  Warm up

  Instead of going into the approach cold, warm up by asking random women if they know of any other good bars or good karaoke joints, etc. You’re not approaching; you’re just asking an innocent question and moving on. This can help you get outside your head and break the cycle of fear.

  Three-Second Rule

  Do not wait more than three seconds to approach a girl. The longer you wait, the more anxiety builds up, and the more reasons accumulate for why you shouldn’t approach. Just do it.

  Visualize

  You can’t go anywhere that you haven’t gone first in your mind. Visualize the approach and your opening line. Then go for it.

  Lower your expectations

  If you’ve never played tennis, would you expect to beat Roger Federer the first time you pick up a racquet? You are new to approaching women. Do not expect the first ten, twenty or even one hundred interactions to go well. Embrace the learning curve.