\u201cThe kind of confidence we\u2019re talking about really comes down to feeling good about your appearance and attractiveness,\u201d says Craig Malkin, Ph.D., a Harvard psychologist. \u201cMen and women both prefer a confident date, for a number of reasons.\u201d For one, confident folks are natural salespeople. Research shows that confidence makes us seem more trustworthy\u2014and when you\u2019re out on the meat market, selling how great you are, confidence makes people accept your pitch.<\/p>\n
Another important reason: Self-assured singles smile, flirt, make eye contact and speak with warmth and directness. They make it clear that they\u2019re interested, and we return the favor\u2014we tend to like those who like us (a concept psychologists call reciprocity). \u201cLess confident daters may even unintentionally spoil the attraction,\u201d Malkin says. \u201cThey avert their gaze, out of anxiety, are slow to respond in conversation, or offer brief answers\u2014all of which signal dislike. As a result, they lose out on the reciprocity effect.\u201d People with low self-esteem also tend to view other people through the same dark lens they use on themselves, focusing on the negatives of whomever they\u2019re with.<\/p>\n
Sure, anyone with a rudimentary grasp on evolutionary psychology would expect the Average Woman to love a confident man. Ladies want status, security, a good provider for their offspring \u2014 and confidence could signal value in those arenas, right? But while decades of research have confirmed this fact (women dig a confident guy), more recent research shows that confident women are a turn-on for men as well.<\/p>\n
Researchers at Webster University camped out in a bar, cataloging in painful detail every flirtatious move the patrons made. (Oh, the life of a psychology research assistant.) One move emerged as the absolute best way for a girl to snag a guy: a smile with a direct gaze. \u201cAmazingly, it didn\u2019t matter what these women looked like!\u201d Malkin says. The chicks who got the most approaches by men weren\u2019t the prettiest\u2014they were the hardest working. \u201cA confident woman who sends signals will win out over a pretty, retiring one ever time,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
Story time: Researchers once asked a group of students to treat a \u201cshy and homely\u201d woman as though she were extremely attractive. (I\u2019m not totally clear on the ethics of this research, or who deemed her uggo, but whatever.) Her confidence skyrocketed over the course of the semester, and other, male students (who had no idea she was the subject of guerrilla research) started asking her out. \u201cThe more self-assured she was, the more open she was with men\u2014and the more attractive she became,\u201d Malkin notes.<\/p>\n
So remember: You really don\u2019t need to be a hottie to be confident. You can raise your own self-esteem by hanging out with other confident people (it\u2019s called \u201clearning modeling\u201d\u2014their good habits will rub off on you), by asking lots of questions instead of ruminating over yourself (asking \u201cDo you live around here?\u201d and actually listening to the answer, vs. asking \u201cDo you live around here?\u201d and thinking \u201cOh my God why is this person talking to me all she can see is this zit on my nose I suck\u201d), flirt by being friendly and keeping it simple (in one study, \u201cHello\u201d was the best pick-up line men could use, with a\u2014wait for it\u2014100 percent success rate).<\/p>\n
And lastly: Don\u2019t be an arrogant jerk. \u201cIf your confidence takes the form of being condescending and disagreeable, you\u2019re not likely to have much advantage in romance,\u201d Malkin says, diplomatically. To that, we add: Mean people suck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe kind of confidence we\u2019re talking about really comes down to feeling good about your appearance and attractiveness,\u201d says Craig Malkin, Ph.D., a Harvard psychologist. \u201cMen and women both prefer a confident date, for a number of reasons.\u201d For one, confident folks are natural salespeople. Research shows that confidence makes us seem more trustworthy\u2014and when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[321,1],"tags":[1118,483,446,1119],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-singles","category-uncategorized","tag-confidence","tag-love","tag-marriage","tag-single-muslim"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1927,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/1927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}