The Science of Likability: 67 Evidence-Based Methods to Radiate Charisma, Make a Powerful Impression, Win Friends, and Trigger Attraction

By King Patrick

100% scientifically-proven ways to make friends quickly, turn enemies into friends, gain trust, and be flat-out likable.
Utilize the most interesting, shocking, and counterintuitive findings in psychological science to simply make people want to be around you.The Science of Likability takes over 67 seminal scientific and psychological studies and breaks them down into real, usable guidelines and tips to create the presence you have always wanted. Every piece of advice in this book to increase your social standing and likability factor is 100% backed by in-depth, peer-reviewed research, and it goes far beyond simple common sense and intuition.
Learn how to subconsciously make yourself likable, trustworthy, and intelligent.
You can get a new haircut and wardrobe, and you even learn knock-knock jokes. But likability is something more. It's subconscious, and it's about the small signs that signal our brains to let their guards down, seek others out, and embrace them. We know what to do if we want to make someone hate us - we now also know what to do to become someone's favorite person.
Understand what makes people tick, and strategically give it to them.
There are seminal studies from (in)famous researchers such as Sigmund Freud, Ivan Pavlov, Stanley Schachter, and Daniel Goleman, but also the most up-to-date discoveries from 2022 - all insightful, analytical, sometimes surprising, but most importantly effective and actionable. Pair that with the insight and human intelligence factor of bestselling author and social skills coach Patrick King, and you have a guide that can be read equally for education as for helpful, real advice. Patrick's writing draws of a variety of sources, from scientific research, academic experience, coaching, and real life experience.

How to take advantage of people's memories for your sense of charm.

The power of equity in relationships and friendships.

A literal formula for "friendship chemistry."

The real way to use eye contact to build trust.

Why tripping and being vulnerable in front of people is positive.

Universal definitions of charisma, wit, and humor - seriously. Universal.

How to look at, and touch someone effectively to generate attraction.

Being likable unlocks the doors to everything you want in life.
A better career? You better believe that the people with the most promotions and highest salaries aren't just the most qualified. Better love life? Being likable makes you a potential love interest to anyone you want. Better relationships and friendships? Not only that, but you open the door to people wanting to be friends with you. Likability is the hidden force that makes people appear to be lucky in life and receive more opportunities than they know what to do with. Likability drives us forward, not intelligence or luck.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Feb 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798413740019

Book preview

The Science of Likability

(4th Edition):

67 Evidence-Based Methods to Radiate Charisma, Make a Powerful Impression, Win Friends, and Trigger Attraction

By Patrick King

Social Interaction and Conversation Coach at www.PatrickKingConsulting.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. How to Make People Desire Your Presence

Context-Dependent Memories

The Power of Association

The Positivity Spreader

Shut Up and Let ’Em Talk!

Chapter 2. How to Create the Foundation of Friendship

Equity Within Relationships

Similarity Breeds Liking

Three Stages of Friendship

The 7 Dealbreakers of Mate Choice

Chapter 3. How to Act the Part

Act First, Think Later

Follow Pygmalion’s Lead

See People How They Want to be Seen

The Chemistry of Friendship

Chapter 4. How to Be Trustworthy

More Is Better

Credibility

Look into My Eyes

Building Attraction Through Gaze and Touch

Chapter 5. How to Make People Lower Their Guards

Oops, I Did It Again

One Ratio to Rule Them All

Advice, Please

Convert Enemies into Friends

Chapter 6. How to Salvage a Social Situation

No Such Thing as Too Much Information

Cracking People Open

Chapter 7. How to Be Charismatic and Funny

The Speed of Wit

What’s So Funny?

Violate Me, But Only a Little Bit

Chapter 8. How to Gossip, Chit-Chat, and Communicate

Gossip as Grooming

When Yes Means No

Summary Guide

Bibliography

Introduction

Like many college underclassmen who had no idea what they wanted to study, I chose to major in psychology.

I thought it was a good default choice because the knowledge theoretically had wide application and could transfer to any other field. After all, psychology is the study of people, and I would be dealing with people anywhere I went, right? It also didn’t hurt that I heard the vast majority of the classes had open-book, multiple-choice midterms and finals.

So I checked the box next to Bachelor of Science in Psychology and went on with my day. It was something I devoted all of ten minutes of thought to, but in reality, I could have done much worse. Psychology has turned out to be incredibly applicable to my life, relationships, and career.

Psychology isn’t about reading minds or interpreting dreams, though that’s the impression some people may have. It’s more accurate to say that psychology is the study of why people do the things they do—beyond the obvious reasons you can see on the surface and often beyond people’s own understanding and consciousness.

This has obvious applications, such as seeing why some advertisements are more effective than others, why a child will rush to do something they are explicitly told not to do, and the plain effect on behavior that positive and negative associations can have.

But the biggest takeaway from my degree was that so many of our decisions are made completely subconsciously and without any awareness on our part. Our conscious thought follows our subconscious will, and it often isn’t until far after we act that we figure out what actually happened. We may think we are acting logically and reasonably in a situation—we may even use defense mechanisms to defend and justify our actions—but this is just our subconscious getting its way.

For example, one of the more famous experiments in psychology was called the Little Albert experiment, conducted in 1920 by the famous psychologist John Watson. It involved the eponymous baby, Little Albert, who was presented with a white rat and nothing else. He had no reaction, positive or negative. Albert had yet to be conditioned or socialized in any way regarding rats.

Next, the researchers paired the rat with a loud crashing noise, which frightened Albert and made him cry in most instances. After only a couple of exposures pairing the rat and the crashing noise, Albert was presented with the rat alone again. He reacted as if the crashing noise was also present; he had become afraid of the rat by itself. But if he could talk, he wouldn’t have been able to explain why. He just knew that anything involving the rat was bad.

He had started associating the rat with the loud noise that frightened him and wasn’t consciously aware of why he was suddenly recoiling and crying whenever he saw the rat by itself.

On the one hand, this tendency to be quickly conditioned to avoid negative situations is something that probably has evolutionary roots. If you didn’t quickly learn that furry, growling animals with large teeth were bad news, you likely didn’t stay alive too long. Regardless, Little Albert provided insight into how something seemingly so subtle and unrelated could affect people’s actions in very real ways.

If people can be subconsciously conditioned about negative associations, aren’t there ways that people can be conditioned to react positively to objects and people? What if Little Albert was conditioned to associate positive things with the rat, such as food or his favorite toy? This would make Albert rejoice upon seeing the rat instead of recoiling in horror. Actually, that was proven in 1897, before Albert was even born.

This brings us to the most famous psychological experiment of the modern age: Pavlov’s dog. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian psychologist, noted that his dog began to salivate when he anticipated a meal.

So Pavlov began to ring a bell every time he fed his dog, which caused a pairing of the two behaviors: the bell and the dog salivating. When Pavlov started ringing the bell by itself, the dog salivated as if there was actual food coming. Without any real clue as to why, the dog thought he was getting delicious bacon every time he heard the bell. Needless to say, this same effect has been replicated in humans time after time.

Little Albert and Pavlov’s dog showed us two sides of the same coin—it is possible for us to become both scientifically desired and despised. It’s probably more helpful to focus on the former, and if a bell can create a positive effect on others, there must be additional, more impactful ways of being scientifically likable.

It’s not that we are simply prone to seeing things where they don’t necessarily exist. In reality, our brains are quite malleable and adaptive, and every adjustment or association our brains see is an attempt at efficiency and energy conservation. We take shortcuts as often as possible, but we usually don’t realize it.

Actually, that’s exactly what we will seek to take advantage of in this book. My mission is to uncover the most effective, peer-reviewed psychological studies to dig deep and take advantage of what human nature can offer us. Just like our brains take shortcuts to everything else, there certainly exist shortcuts to likability and charm.

You’ll learn proven ways to make yourself endearing, likable, funny, convincing, persuasive, trustworthy, credible, and instantly magnetic. You’ll learn why we hit it off with some people but never with others; why we feel chemistry with some people and instantly mutter, Ugh, not them, in the presence of others; and why we instinctively trust some people and check for our wallets around others.

Using these tactics can certainly be seen as fake or manipulative. I can recognize and sympathize with that perspective. Anytime you are presenting something besides the genuine you and trying to do something slightly sneaky, underhanded, or with ulterior motives, you can feel icky. This is one of the main reasons many people do not prefer sales jobs—there is usually an undercurrent of becoming someone you are not in order to reach the goal of selling something. But my experience as a social skills and dating coach leads me to a different conclusion. Not everyone is born with what you might call social or emotional intelligence, and sometimes people just need a guideline to understanding and connecting with others. It’s no different than thinking about how to prepare for a job interview or a date, and people wear makeup and dress better to make good impressions on people. Indeed, it’s no different than asking a friend for advice on, well, any interpersonal matter. It all serves the same goal.

These studies run the gamut from confirmatory and common sense to shocking and counterintuitive and everything in between. Even the common-sense studies are important because, after all, common sense is not really so common. We all live through only the perspective that our experiences show us, and what is common sense to us (for instance, being raised in a rich family and knowing how yachts work) is certainly not common sense to those without our same experiences (for instance, being raised in poverty and never having seen the beach before). Something only seems obvious to us because we have seen it in action, and then you may realize that your sense of common sense amounts to simple anecdotal evidence.

And besides, if common sense was truly common, people would generally make better decisions on a daily basis.

On the other hand, some you might flat-out deny and not believe what the studies say. But just as heliocentrism (the theory that the sun revolved around the earth instead of the other way around) was thought to be heretical and wrong, sometimes you just have to follow the documented evidence and let go of your preconceptions. Just because it is not immediately obvious doesn’t mean that the figurative dog is not being compelled to salivate.

All of that and more is The Science of Likability.

Chapter 1. How to Make People Desire Your Presence

Why do some people instantly like us while others seem to be offended by our very existence?

Is hitting it off and becoming friends with people purely a roll of the dice, or is there something more we can do to control our chances of connecting with people?

For many people, likability does seem to be a game of chance. If you happen to sit next to someone who is similar to you, and who also happens to share a hobby or hometown, then you will have something to connect over. But statistically, that can’t happen with every new friend we make, so things aren’t quite adding up. As we saw from Little Albert and Pavlov’s dog, we are more influenceable than we might assume.

People who see likability as completely organic and natural are somewhat misguided because cultivating a feeling of likability around yourself is just like any other emotion—it can be triggered, summoned, eliminated, and ultimately engineered. If we want to make someone angry with us, we certainly know what to do and how to adjust our behavior. If we want to make someone cry, we also know how to create that feeling. Likability is not much different; we push psychological buttons, but for a far more desirable outcome.

We all have specific and subtle triggers that influence the way we view others and how they view us. Most of them are minuscule, subconscious, and mired in the minutiae—but these are the details that actually make the difference. If you went into a restaurant and saw only one cockroach hiding in the corner, well, it might be minuscule but still quite important.

The first chapter of the book focuses on the small details that comprise our first impressions, an integral part of likability. First impressions run deep, are not subject to change, and are your first opportunity to be likable, so this is as good a place to start as any.

Context-Dependent Memories

Memories have long been found to be context-dependent, first by Godden and Baddeley in 1975 in their breakthrough publication Context-Dependent Memory in Two Natural Environments: On Land and Underwater, which means memories are heavily linked to the environment, events, sounds, feelings, and even smells that were present during the formation of the memory. The researchers found that either being on land or underwater led subjects to recall different sets of memories.

We can see this in our everyday lives. For instance, this is why so many of us fall into bouts of nostalgia when we hear certain songs—the song is information that is linked to much more than the song itself. This is why smelling a whiff of a buttercream pie takes us back to our grandmother’s homes when we were children.

This means memory is not a flat representation of a set of events—it’s a holistic, three-dimensional snapshot of everything that was happening at that exact moment in time. Whatever else you were experiencing at the time is linked to the memory and can be used to bring it back up. Our brains act as sponges, not focused lasers, and absorb both consciously and subconsciously.

Obviously, we don’t always realize this because, by nature, the subconscious is beyond our awareness. But you might recall the feeling when you walk into your old school and suddenly memories come flooding into your brain as if on cue.

But in fact, a 1994 study by Eich, Macauley, and Ryan titled Mood Dependent Memory for Events of the Personal Past found that memories were also mood-dependent. In other words, the mood we had when the memory was formed is also part of the memory. The information is in there somewhere, and Eich and his associates found that appealing to those hidden aspects of memories allows you to influence people’s moods for the better.

The researchers created situations to put the participants in either good or bad moods. Then the subjects were given neutral words and asked what type of memories the neutral words evoked. Participants who were in good moods typically recalled positive memories while participants who were in bad moods typically recalled negative memories. And of course, the subsequent memories recalled served to further increase the moods they were in—misery and happiness both grew.

Memory and mood are closely linked, and influencing one can influence the other. In other words, if we think about happy memories, our mood rises, and if we think about dreadful memories, our mood plummets. By itself, it’s not a huge revelation. If you think about puppies and kittens racing toward a bowl of food, you are likely to smile and laugh and