Is there anyone that doesn’t like the idea of becoming more romantically attractive? It’s one of our strongest and most fundamental motivations, and I’m willing to bet that many of your daily activities are motivated by it, whether you realize it or not. And that’s not a bad thing at all—it’s a natural biological process (just think of a peacock preening its feathers to impress a suitor).
However, the term “becoming more attractive” is usually intimidating. If you’re anything like me, that phrase just conjures up images of slaving away in the gym, counting every calorie, spending hours in the salon, and spending an ungodly amount of money getting every imperfection sucked, snipped, tucked, dyed, tanned, or cut off. Exhausting, right? Well, what if I told you that there are some sneaky tips you can use to cheat the system, and make yourself more romantically attractive without doing ANY of those things? It’s true! According to psychological research that I’ve learned in my Interpersonal Relationships psychology course, these are the top seven ways to make yourself more romantically attractive to your crush:
1. Be around them a lot
No no no, not in a stalker-ish way. That defeats the whole purpose. But the proximity effect is a real psychological effect, and a pretty simple one at that. It states that more you see somebody, the more likely you are to like them. You see super-hot girls walking around campus ALL the time, and even when me and my friends aren’t at school, there are other semi-attractive people there, too. But who are the people you actually get crushes on, start boning, and eventually start dating? These would be the people that you see on a regular basis.
2. Make it known that you like them
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the field of social psychology has officially pronounced that the whole playing-hard-to-get thing, in scientific terms, is “moronic.” The reciprocity effect states that you are more likely to like somebody when it’s known that they like you back. So yes, you can tell me you’re in love with me already *waits patiently for inbox to flood*.
3. Be surrounded by attractive people of the opposite sex–but only if you’re a guy
As it turns out, when a girl sees a guy surrounded by attractive girls, she’ll think of him as more attractive, supposedly because of social proof (we’ll talk about that later). However, the opposite is true for guy. When a guy sees a girl surrounded by a group of attractive guys, he’ll get all intimidated and be all, “Oh no, they probably bench more than me,” and then leave to go play FIFA and sulk.
The takeaway for this is that if you’re a guy and have ugly girl friends, get rid of them. If you’re a girl and have attractive guy friends, get rid of them, unless you’re trying to get with one of them, in which case, get rid of the rest of them.
4. Get your crush’s friends to like you
Social proof is best defined by saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” and it stems from what is probably pure human laziness, as it turns out that we really don’t like to think for ourselves that often. How often has this following scenario happened to you: your friends are all going on and on about how hot this person is, and you really don’t see it at all. But they keep talking about it, because I guess this person is REALLY hot, and finally, you start to see it? Ladies and gentlemen, that is social proof at work. Get your crush’s friends to like you (or at the very least, hate you but think you’re super attractive) and your chances are that much better.
5. Wear red
Multiple studies have shown that we’re more attracted to people wearing red. Science isn’t exactly sure why yet, so don’t press me on the details. Just do it, and make sure that your “something red” is a cute red dress or something alone those lines, not a blood-stained T-shirt or, even worse, a red fedora. My professor didn’t talk about that in class, but I feel like that’d negate the effects.
6. Put them in fear-raising situations
It’s classic manipulation of misattribution of emotions. In other words, if somebody is scared, and then they see you, they’ll attribute their arousal (increased heart rate, adrenaline, feeling like they’re going to die) to being around you, not the situation. So that whole taking-your-date-to-a-scary-movie thing? It’s actually a very, very smart move. Furthermore, this effect is so strong, it still works even when you’re the one being scared and you know exactly what’s happening. Don’t ask me how I know that.
7. Good old-fashioned isolation
No, don’t corner the person you like or kidnap them or any of that crazy, illegal stuff. But studies show that the more alone time you spend with someone, the more likely you are to develop feelings for them. Of course, also the more likely you are to hate their guts and want to kill them, but you know.
There you have it. According to my psych class, these are the simplest and most effective scientifically proven ways to win someone over, and you now have access to all of them. I’m not really a fan of chasing after guys, but I am a fan of subtle mind tricks that will help stack the odds in my favor, and I’m sure you are too. So do with these tips what you will, and good luck.
Featured image courtesy of Wikipedia.org via CreativeCommons.org
Sources for articles for validity?
Also, fairly good but some aspects point to some knowledge of PUA? Does the author know about this ?
Awesome list! As somebody who’s passionately invested in studying through and field-testing the arts of seduction, I especially like the sub-title “6. Put them in fear-raising situations.” The latter is all about is causing your crush to feel a strong emotional rollercoaster that’s the mixture of polar-opposite emotions that trigger their strong attraction to you. This attraction phenomenon is especially effective when a man does it on his desired woman, because women are by nature very emotional and therefore they’re very susceptible to getting attracted to the man who can cause such an emotional rollercoaster inside them. In my opinion, the deeper meaning of where all this actually comes from is in understanding that what most women are truly attracted to in any dating situation with a man is nothing but subtly playing that flirty push-and-pull game all the time, because playing such game is what dating and flirting are all about, and that’s how attraction is eventually triggered and maintained.
So, for example, when you as a man are having her sit next to you while you two are watching a horror movie together, the ‘pull’ part of the push-and-pull game that she’d be drawn to is subconsciously seeing you as a savior who she can turn to for a consoling, warm hug on one side, and on the other side, the ‘push’ part that she’s powerfully drawn to is her increased heart rate and adrenaline that the horror movie is causing her to feel.
Interestingly enough, I’ve lately made a pretty identical conclusion on the color red as the cause of that same emotional rollercoaster that women get powerfully attracted to in a man dressed in red. Why? It’s because the color red essentially bears two main polar-opposite associations:
a) The association with a high social status that sub-communicates warmth and security to women.
b) The association with danger, risk or violence that all subtly sub-communicate manly power, masculinity and confidence to women.
Hope you find my observations helpful enough to fully understand the essence and the roots of the psychology of attraction in action, so to say.
Bruno Babic
founder of PickUpFlow
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I know I’m a year late BUT THIS IS THE BEST DATING ARTICLE ON THE INTERNET I HAVE READ IN 10 years. Thank God you didn’t say “just be yourself” or “have interesting hobbies” or “get in shape” and “read good books”. I esp like 1, 2, and 7. Tho alas, even they have not helped me with my latest crush (perhaps because she is a Lesbian, at least that is what they always tell me).
This article is very informative and interesting. I definitely need to try some of these tricks!
Unless that me and the guy I like spend a lot of time together, he works near where I live so we just casually meet in the street, we casually meet at the bar, in the bank…I also casually am in service with the Red Cross every Sunday at his football games (he thinks it’s casual it’s actually not of course) we also hang out together sometimes you know having dinner, watching movies, stuff like that.
Plus he definitely knows I like him because – I mean – the signes were very clear – I had only kissing him in front of the sunset left if he couldn’t get it.
I don’t have attractive friends, I mean yeah they’re all cute but still he’d never feel intimidated by them, not even by my ex boyfriends because he’s, like, wow.
He’s friends. Ah his friends adore me, find me funny, like having me around, think I’m a gorgeous girl, easy to talk to…blah blah blah.
Probably we’ve never been in a scary situation together and I totally hate wearing red.
Anyway we spend a lot of time alone. Like chatting on his sofa, or in my car, or wherever late at night.
Still, he swears he really likes being with me, he finds me attractive, he enjoys talking with me, but he’d rather be with anyone else that with me.
Sometimes I guess you just have to accept that not everyone can fall for you.
kill yourself author
That’s just uncalled for 😐
I am bharathi . I am tamilnadu .i became very very crush on my friend its like love,romantic .but i want to hate this crush.because i am suffer a lot lot of my crush.i alwaya thinking about him.so i didn’t do my wrk properly.this thinking makes me a mental attitude .so i forget a crush……plss§ssss.give me a good advices and tips pls…………………..
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great!, thanks for the tips
a guy in my class some times insults me and some times he turns soft hearted towards me…..Does he like me?
Probably… he sounds like a dick though