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Social and Behavioral Norms
Gayle Laakmann McDowell, Consultant (tech hiring/interviewing), Author (Cracking the * Interview), Coder
19.5k Views • Upvoted by Stephanie Vardavas, born in the USA, live there, love it, Heather Jedrus, I've lived in the US my whole life.
Gayle is a Most Viewed Writer in Social and Behavioral Norms.
This is a cultural norm in the US. We don't talk about how much money we have.

There are a lot of reasons for this:

Manners are self-reinforcing. In the US, it's generally considered inappropriate / rude / tacky / a bad idea to discuss your income. This is just one of those things that's drilled into you, like chewing with your mouth closed. Even if someone doesn't judge you for your salary, they'll judge you because you're talking about it. Polite people don't do that; where are your manners?

People judge you whether you're rich or poor.
Oh, you're poor? Well, no wonder. You're lazy -- you took off two days last week just 'cause -- and you waste money. I saw you eyeing that purse. Maybe if you stopped spending so much money you'd finally be able to afford it.

Oh, you're rich? No wonder you asked what kind of car I bought. God, you're such a snob, with your fancy car and fancy shoes. And, seriously, what was up with you not just splitting the bill at that restaurant we went to? You make 3x times as much as us, and you didn't want to chip in for the 3 bottles of wine just because you didn't drink? Ugh.

Basically, it's uncomfortable for your friends to see you as rich or as poor. So why give them that information?

Money differences create distance.
Most of your friends don't make as much money as you. They might make more, and they might make less. But they probably don't make the exact same. So whatever your salary is, you're now setting yourself apart as different.

People equate salary with richness.
High salary? People will see this as your not having to save like they do. They may not realize that you have a sick parent to take care of and you aren't really all that rich.

Low salary? People might wonder why you're not saving more -- you have your kid's education to think about! What were you thinking buying that house? Of course, they don't realize that you inherited that house from your grandmother.

Bragging is bad.

If someone volunteers that they went to Harvard, people are very quick to perceive this as "bragging," even when it was completely relevant to the conversation. So, Harvard alums will often just say they went to school in Boston. There are some things that are seen as so inherently elitist that simply saying them gets your action classified as bragging. High incomes are one of those things. The saying-my-salary-is-bragging feeling is so ingrained that it's there even when people directly ask. Bragging is considered bad in the US because arrogance is bad, as it being mean or insensitive to others.

It makes other people uncomfortable.
Even if you don't judge people on salary, and you don't think your friends will judge you based on your salary, it still might make them feel bad about themselves (if you're out-earning them). High incomes are seen as a sign of success. If you're out-earning your friends, they might feel bad that they aren't successful enough.

Many men misunderstand how attraction works.

They think women are attracted by good looks, or money, or material possessions — or worse yet, humor, honesty, integrity, or personality.

The people who believe the former are not so horribly disillusioned as those who believe the latter; but neither group is to be ashamed of these mistake beliefs, since there is a lot of interest (in the feminist media) in perpetuation these false notions.

When you ask a woman the time-honored question, “What do you look for in a guy?” I can guarantee you with 100% accuracy that her answer is going to contain some mixture of the following elements:

1. Sense of humor
2. Good looks
3. A good personality
4. Someone fun
5. A good listener

All the above is pure, unadulterated horseshit. Maybe that’s a bit too harsh; it is certainly self-delusional hypocrisy.

One of the most important lessons to learn about women is the following:

What they THINK they want, what they SAY they want, and what they are actually attracted to, are three entirely different things.

So when you ask a woman her opinion of what she wants, it’s a lot like asking her for an honest opinion of herself: what’s going to come out of her mouth in answer is pretty much white-washed and delusional. She will give you an answer you want to hear, or an answer that is socially acceptable and carefully tailored not to ruffle any (of her female friends’) feathers, or contravene any social or feminist laws or expectations.

(Please understand: I’m not passing judgment on women by saying this. This is not to say this is a *bad* thing at all. It’s merely how women are set up, how they work, and there’s no moral value assigned to it.)

So, we can’t rely on women to give us an accurate picture of what they want; but most of us probably knew that already. That begs the question, Do women actually believe what they say themselves? In other words, do they even know what they really want?

I think, in most cases, the answer here is No; they do not. But they sure know how to act when they begin to feel genuinely attracted to a man; they cannot help themselves, in fact.

Women Respond To….
So the million dollar question is, what do women actually respond to?

In short: feelings.

Women respond to emotional states that they find themselves in as a result of a strong masculine presence. Women are attracted to men that can make them feel a certain way, men that can put them in the right states.

One common emotional state that women enjoy being put in: challenged.

Another one: confusion.

Another: off-guard, unbalanced, uneasy.

Can you spot the pattern? If you can, give yourself a cookie. If not, let me give you another hint:

Women enjoy (and are aroused by) being made to feel that they are not in control. This is their natural emotional state as women, and it is positively and evolutionarily linked to the occurrence of them being taken care of, sheltered, provided for, and pair-bonded in a long-term survival situation.

Now that I’ve given the game away, it should be pretty clear what sort of male behavior women are really after, what they really get turned on by: dominance.

Dominance in a man is universally considered attractive by women (Matt Ridley, The Red Queen)

Of course, when Matt Ridley or I say “dominance”, we don’t mean throwing a girl around, hitting her, or telling her what to do all the time (although done properly, that last can be golden). I specifically mean acting from a place of inherently higher value than any given woman.

Now feminists, or others of egalitarian persuasion, are going to explode over that last sentence. “Men aren’t inherently higher value than women! How dare you suggest that!”

Notice, dear feminist readers, that I didn’t say BELIEVE you are higher value; I said act from a place of higher value.

Act as if.

Fake it.

What works is acting as if you are the higher value individual in the interaction. Assume your role as a man to lead interactions, to decide the flow and pacing of conversation, the topic of conversation (see my three-part series on conversation, especially Managing The Conversation). Lead women physically where you want them to go, direct them do X or Y or pick up Z or hand you W or place nob D in hole V - and they will become extremely attracted and, in many cases, intensely turned on.

This is why teasing a girl is so powerful. The girl feels that you view her as a child (or childish), a plaything, a willing and fun companion you can play little jokes on - because she is not a serious threat to you, and following the train of logic, this is because you are naturally dominant over her. Teasing a girl in a fun way (not a mean way) tells her that you are in control of the situation and making sport because you enjoy it. She responds powerfully and positively to being teased because she is enjoying being lead by a dominant man.

Even if you don’t initially feel like you are the more dominant partner, Act As If, and it will become so through time and practice. Fake it ’till you make it.

This is why there is the constant inane exhortation to simply “be The Man” in interactions with women to get good results. Or rather, it’s not that the encouragement to “be The Man” is so bad, it’s just that, improperly explained, it’s next to useless. Who is The Man, anyway? Are your buddies encouraging you to be the faceless, nameless oppressive regime that all the hippies were fighting against in the 60’s? Are you supposed to act like a corrupt cop? Who knows?

The advice to simply “Be The Man” needs to be unpacked, thusly: be the man who doesn’t care about the female response to his conversation. Be the man who has a girlfriend waiting at home and is just chilling out at a martini bar, killing time. Be the man who loves women and enjoys teasing them but is not overly concerned with what they have to say or how they act.

We have to get away from this vague, macho advice to “be the Man” and onto more specific advice on how to generate attraction in women.

In other words: you see an attractive girl. You’d like her to become wildly wet just thinking about you. How to go about this?

Being “The Man”….Practical Advice
Well, first, she must see you as a sexual human being, realize you see her as one also, and become attracted to you. Later, she must become absolutely convinced that you will be a Sexual God in bed and bring her everything she has ever wished for in a sex partner (but that is also the topic of another article). For now, let’s look JUST at the part about her “becoming attracted to you.”

In order to be attracted to you, a modern, feminized woman in a liberal, democratic, industrial or post-industrial society must basically only have one fundamental realization:

You are cooler than she is.

You are higher value. You are more sophisticated. You are more experienced. You have better friends, or more friends. You are higher status. However you want to phrase it - I find it simplest to boil it down to the fundamental High School status mentality: you are simply cooler than she is.

That will get her attracted - and if not attracted, at least interested - in you.

The difference between her being “attracted” and “interested” is a fine point that must be further explored, of course, because most guys I know are not looking to gather 100’s of attractive women to be their best platonic pal, but instead would like 100’s of attractive women to be their best sexual pal.

But it’s enough to know, for now, that the 100% most essential thing for a woman to even possibly be attracted to you, is that you be cooler than her.

After that, she must view you as a sexual master, as noted above, and see you as an attractive personality - someone who can engage and ignite her own imagination, basically - but those are all topics we can delve into more deeply in other posts.

For now, I want to wrap up by providing pointers on how best to Spark Attraction (that is, how to Show a Woman That you are Cooler than She is):

1. Be less reactive to her comments than she is to yours.
Think of this as being Zen. You tell a joke, she cracks up; she tells a joke, you chuckle, but not as hard or as long as she did. And don’t play this off like you’re just a stiff, boring guy, or too reserved, either (if you’re not careful, it can slide into that).

2. One-up her statements in subtle ways.
If she says something that makes her more personally impressive - like that she makes a lot of money, or that she knows someone famous, say something offhand and dismissive, like “That’s cool…” rather than jumping up and down on the couch like, “OMG! That is a-MAZING! DIDJA GET HIS AUTOGRAPH!”

3. Dress in a way that says “I am cooler”
Now how exactly you do this will take more explaining on another day, and I will catch flak from guys as to how lame it is that I am advocating dressing “metro” or “gay”, but in my experience (and in the literature), there is no denying it: being a well-manicured male genuinely gets women interested in you.

On the other hand, particular types of women respond very powerfully to the unwashed / unshaved / Fresh From The Construction-Site type guy, and that’s a perfectly valid route to go as well, if you go for those types of girls.

Another way to “dress cooler”, advocated by many seduction experts, is to “peacock” - i.e. wear flashy, outrageous outfits complete with “bling” - flashy jewelry, walking sticks, top hats, crazy accessories, parrots, monkeys, toy dogs, etc. Think of how pimps or rap stars dress - or, Hell, how any black person might dress at a nightclub (if you haven’t been to many nightclubs, or seen any black people attend them, the short explanation is that black people can get away with wearing anything to a nightclub, and they do).

The bottom line is: if you want women to be attracted to you, your clothes should say “I am so cool I don’t even care what people think of me.” Of course pulling this off without looking like a complete dweeb is an art in and of itself, but we can go into that later.

4. Imagine her (whatever girl it is you are trying to attract) as a bratty 6th grader with braces and a pocket protector who just won the Middle School Spelling Bee and is trying to show you her trophy
Okay, that’s a little hyperbolic, but I think you can see what I’m getting at: make-believe in your head that she already is of lower value, and all your actions will fall into place to put yourself at a higher value naturally.

Look, #’s 1-4 above are generalized suggestions, 4 out of 10,000 I could make that would encourage men to Act Dominant. There are an infinite number of ways a man can express attraction-causing, arousal-inspiring dominance - but express it he must, or attraction will not happen.

Pedestaling and Oneitis
The reason I spend so much time belaboring the point that Dominance and Higher Value are essential to attraction is because a lot of guys have a common hang-up with women that I like to call “pedestaling“.

What “pedestaling” means is just that guys go through a process whereby they take ordinary women and attribute to them higher value than they actually have — placing them on a “pedestal”.

Mostly, this occurs because of perceived scarcity — a lack of female interaction or exposure the guy is experiencing, and then translates into some objective, overarching belief about the state of the world.

So for instance, if a guy who doesn’t get out much (and therefore doesn’t have much chance to interact with beautiful women) happens to go out one night and ends up meeting an average or even slightly-above-average girl, he will most likely start “pedestaling” her right away — OMG she’s so beautiful, she’s so intelligent, she’s so nice and happy and fun to be around, he thinks he is immediately beginning to like her, a LOT, and more than as just friends….

In other words, JUST because of perceived scarcity, the guy is boosting this random woman’s value very high, very quickly, simply because he thinks she is rare, and therefore valuable, and his fear of losing all her good qualities motivates him to see her as more valuable than she actually is.

(Of course, this “pedestaling” absolutely sabotages any chances this guy ever had of generating attraction with this girl, since he is boosting her value in his own eyes much faster than she could ever possibly boost his value in her eyes).

This is similar to Oneitis, and just as deadly to the seductive process.

On the other hand, a guy who is around beautiful women all day long (say, as part of his job, in a nightclub or modeling agency) is likely to get sick of how “bland” and “bitchy” they are, and be completely desensitized to traditional female beauty, to the point that begins to view women as a dime-a-dozen, and devaluing what they offer.

Attraction Cheat Sheet
So, to recap:

Women respond to dominant males
Women are attracted to, and respond to, dominant, playful behavior from these males
Women do not want to be “pedestaled”; they would actually prefer you be a higher value than they are

Now, the extent to which a woman is attracted to a dominant man — we might call it her Dominance Threshold — is set by the average amount of dominance displayed by the males she comes into contact with on a daily basis.

So, a woman working in, say, a Dairy Queen, with a bunch of milquetoast 16-year-old boys taking orders from her, is going to have a much lower Dominance Threshold than, say, a female bartender with a beautiful body working at a very high-traffic nightclub.

In other words, the Dairy Queen woman would be much more easily impressed by the slightest demonstration of dominant masculine behavior: let’s say a good-looking, clean-cut frat boy rolling through her drive-thru in his Jeep 4×4 with his hot surfer buddies and saying “Thanks cupcake” as he takes his food.

Whereas, in that high-traffic nightclub, that same mild display of dominance by the frat boy, if directed at the beautiful female bartender, would probably cause her to throw his ass out of the club — because, to her, it was a lame and demeaning attempt at dominance, horribly ill-suited to her value in the venue.

What might work better for the bartender, in her natural environment, is a scummy, unshaven but ruggedly attractive biker (replete with leather jacket), playfully swatting her ass as she takes his order, and then winking at her afterwards. Or, she might throw his ass out, too — it depends on the woman.

And that is the biggest take-home message from this diary: It Depends. Attraction cannot be understood without understanding the crucial important of its cousin, Calibration - that is, the right kind of dominance, at the right levels, for the right girl, in the right situation.

In other words, it’s all relative — but it’s also all reality.

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