How do people come to believe that others are so much less trustworthy than themselves?
Much as we might prefer otherwise, there’s solid evidence that, on average, people are quite cynical about human nature.
We quickly sense how others view us and play up to these expectations.
A good exercise for learning about yourself is to think about how other people might view you in different ways. Consider how your family, your work colleagues or your partner think of you.
Continue reading “How Other People’s Unspoken Expectations Control Us”
Is interpersonal attraction a self-fulfilling prophecy?
The mystical-sounding ‘acceptance prophecy’ is simply this: when we think other people are going to like us, we behave more warmly towards them and consequently they like us more. When we think other people aren’t going to like us, we behave more coldly and they don’t like us as much.
Continue reading “The Acceptance Prophecy: How You Control Who Likes You”
Does the application of cosmetics encourage others to make the first move?
Painting of the face and body has a history dating back at least 10,000 years. According to Pliny the Elder even 2,000 years ago the Romans were using natural products in ways we would instantly recognise: they had rouge, deodorants, hair dye, wrinkle removers, breath fresheners and much more.
What is it about romance that makes men more helpful, chivalrous even?
What is it about romance that makes men more helpful, chivalrous even?
While dreaming of his beloved a man easily slips into a daydream of himself clad in shining armour, riding his trusty white charger, sweeping to the rescue of a beautiful woman. In reality he may only be holding a door open or picking up the tab, but the feeling is the same.
Do you think you’d be able to accurately describe why you find a person attractive?
Across a crowded room your eyes lock with an attractive stranger. You look away, you look back. The first hint of a smile plays across their lips. Suddenly you’re nervous, your mind goes blank, you want to go over and you want to run away, both at the same time.
You turn around too fast, bump into someone, almost spilling your drink. ‘Wow,’ you think as you recover, ‘Now, that’s what I’m talking about!’.
Continue reading “At the Heart of Attraction Lies Confusion: Choice Blindness”
We need rapport to influence others, to teach and learn, to achieve difficult tasks in groups and even to mate.
Rapport is important. We need rapport to influence others, to teach and learn, to achieve difficult tasks in groups and even to mate. The latest research reveals gaining rapport is not just about matching body language and being positive, the picture is actually much more complicated. Studies have shown that expressivity is actually one of the most important factors in rapport. An expressive person displays their emotions nonverbally to those around them. Those who are more expressive have been found to elicit greater levels of liking and rapport from others.
Continue reading “Achieving Rapport: Expressivity, Coordination and Flow”
Interactions were videotaped from behind a one-way screen and participants were asked afterwards how likely they would be to go on a date with the person they’d met.
Glossy magazine articles on the body language of attraction often quote two vital nonverbal factors: posture mirroring and movement echo. The first is where the other person has adopted the same position as you and the second is where they copy your movement. While they both play a role, research suggests it’s not in fact the individual movements, but the patterns of movements that tell the story of attraction between two people.
Nonverbal behaviour is an area of psychology that receives stacks of media attention.
Nonverbal behaviour is an area of psychology that receives stacks of media attention. There are endless popular psychology pieces claiming to teach you how to tell if someone is lying or whether they like you or not. All well and good, these things are really useful to know. But where popular accounts often fail is they tend to be simplistic.
The BBC series, The Secrets of the Sexes, has gone from hero(ish) to zero in only one week. This week’s show asked whether science can predict sexual attraction. It wasn’t just the resounding answer of “No!” that sent my head into my hands.
The previous show on ‘Brain Sex’ had used the individuals involved in the show to highlight and explain psychological theories. This show relegated the theories to onlookers in a race to see if a couple of singletons could get any dates.
By the end, the programme was desperate for any kind of success, no matter where it came from. Even though it had almost no bearing on the theories of attraction proposed by the psychologists, the producers obviously wanted one of the couples to get together as if this would validate the programme. No such luck.
Its crowning achievement was to get an eager-to-please politics lecturer to slather himself in extract of cucumber and liquorice to make him irresistible. Needless to say, it didn’t work. This combined with the risible speed-dating efforts of ‘The London Seduction Society‘ (yes, it’s for real) made me wonder why any reputable psychologist would involve themselves – other than for money and fame of course.
As for the quality of the third and last programme in the series, your guess is as good as mine.
Secrets of the Sexes
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