Social Proof
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007Some time ago now I wrote a newsletter on where to find the love of your life. I wanted to share something with you that’s very closely related. It’s key to your success in getting dates once you’ve tracked down where your likely partners are hanging out.
It’s critical that you take advantage of the phenomenon referred to as ‘social proof’. If you want to attract the seriously attractive individuals around you then you really need to understand how it works.
I did a comedy course some time ago and was introduced to the concept of status. It turns out that in any interaction you are either going to have high, equal or low status. Examples being: teacher/student, boss/employee, policewoman/criminal. Hopefully you get the idea. Where this relates to dating is that if you’re hoping to make an impression you must be perceived as at least equal status to the person you’re approaching and ideally slightly higher status.
This isn’t really a new concept for you, you’ve been using it for years, it’s just that most of us aren’t aware of it. In advertising they talk about ‘endorsement’, current examples being that David Beckham wears a certain style of sunglasses, Madonna uses a certain phone network and Sarah Jessica Parker a certain soap.
I’m sure you’re aware that companies will pay 10’s of thousands for that kind of endorsement and they don’t do it as a tax break! If you ever saw the sales figures leap up following a good ad campaign you’d be horrified at just how suggestible everyone else is. 
It’s the same thing with packaging in supermarkets. Most of us are physically unable to pick up an own brand product. You know that the 9 pence tin of beans tastes about the same as the 25 pence tin, but you’re not going to buy it. Why? Because you feel on some level you’re going to look cheap by comparison. Believe it or not there is even a level of social pressure that most people submit to when we shop publicly. Sad and very shallow I know, but true.
So how does this apply to dating? Well given it’s very unlikely that you’re going to get celebrity endorsement yourself you’ve got to come up with some other ways of raising your credibility. Think about it, how excited would you be about getting to spend some time with average Joe or Joan. Not very. Especially if you’re honest with yourself or haven’t hit ‘dateless and desperate to find someone for Christmas’ yet. So raising yourself way above being perceived as average is important, at least in terms of attracting dates.
In past newsletters I’ve talked about how important it is to raise your self esteem so you exude ‘You’d be a damn fool to miss getting to know me better!’ vibes. I’ve also talked about upgrading your image through the clothes you wear and your personal styling. Hopefully you’ve done something about those things and you’re searching in the right places to find potential dates – dance classes, speakers clubs, etc.
You’d be foolish to expect that you can stroll into one of these places and suddenly get the attention of the person you desire. Social pressure will be at work in these environments.
Earlier in the year one of my clients started going to dance classes. When he first started asking women to dance a lot of them would literally avert their eyes as he approached them, especially the ones that could be graded as high status in terms of their looks or ability to dance. You see they didn’t know he used Beckham’s razor and Sarah’s soap. In that environment he looked more like the 9 pence tin of beans. He ended up dancing with the women that looked more like his mother. At the time he was truly grateful for the practice because he understood the importance of ‘social proof’. This guy has high status in every other area of his life, it was just the dancing that was letting him down.
Six months on it’s an entirely different scene and it’s not because people know him. You can drop this guy into any jive dance environment and within a couple of dances an invisible queue will form around him. This queue includes women he’s never even met before because they trust the judgement of the other women in the room. He’s now so easily perceived as high status that he can dance with a woman just twice, ask for her number and generally get it.
It would have been very easy to assume that the women in these places were just snotty or aloof and given up after a couple of weeks. I’ve seen people do this time and time again talking about how unfriendly certain ‘clubs’ are. Hopefully you now understand why putting some time in as a beginner is going to pay dividends in the future. Let’s just call it your apprenticeship as you work on your craft.
Best wishes
Michael
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