
Making Yourself Likable - mhb
http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2009/04/want-to-make-friends-eight-tips-for-making-yourself-likable.html
======
wallflower
> 2\. Be easily impressed, entertained, and interested. Most people get more
> pleasure from wowing you with their humor and insight than from being wowed
> by your humor and insight.

I have struggled with this in the past. The key takeaway I've learned is that
the person is just trying to relate a feeling to you - about what they are
talking about - e.g. not to convince you. Stop trying to be a know-it-all or
Mr. Logic.

Example: Woman friend enters wearing thrifty-looking but interesting pea coat.

Friend: "Hey, check out my coat. Guess how much I paid?"

Me: "Hmm. $25?"

Friend: "No. $30"

Both: Silence

What I should have said: "$100?!"

Or even better?: "Let's go case out that store. I want one in my size."
(joking)

It's not about getting the correct answer - this is not a game show "The Price
is Right" - being friendly is more about letting someone express their emotion
behind their words and maybe even brag a little

~~~
zhyder
The problem is that your friend will eventually ask the same question to an
honest person, or otherwise discover that $25-30 is really the widespread
going rate for the coat. And then feel even worse (especially if she actually
overpaid for the coat and lost the chance to return it within 30 days). By
making yourself likable, you're potentially reducing the long-term happiness
of the friend. Of course this example is about a frivolous thing, but what if
the original question was "what do you think of my startup idea"?

There are some cases where being brutally honest has no long-term benefit so
you might as well white lie, but it takes too much mental overhead to figure
that out at every such stage in every conversation. I hate it when people
default to always white lying.

I default to being honest, to the extent that I respond truthfully to the
dreaded "does this make me look fat" question. I hope we can still be friends.

~~~
silentbicycle
> but it takes too much mental overhead to figure that out at every such stage
> in every conversation

This is the heart of the matter, I think. A large part of the brain's power
seems to be tuned for sensing status and other social friend-or-foe questions.
It's a genuinely complex problem, and it's hard to do while you're also
thinking hard about something else.

(The flip side of this is that sometimes it's useful to anthropomorphize the
elements of the problem, and that explaining a problem to someone else often
brings out aspects you've overlooked.)

------
sfphotoarts
Handing out $100 bills is another way... This all seems more about projecting
or acting the role of a likable person than actually being genuine. There are
times though when that is necessary, interviews I suppose.

~~~
mhb
Except that the cause and effect of smiling, for example, is not
unidirectional. Not only do people smile when they're happy, but forcing
yourself to smile _makes_ you happier.

------
quizbiz
Does anyone have any tips for remembering peoples' names? I hate the fact that
it takes me forever to learn names. As soon as the conversation moves beyond,
"hi I'm ____" I forget. It kills me inside.

~~~
barry-cotter
Address them by name every so often during the intrnoductory conversation.
Look at them while repeating their name in your head.

------
christofd
It's not that easy. Just being nice will probably not make you gain any
friends. It's a "mixed-martial art", a combination of stuff: the right socio-
economic status, the right age bracket, the right education, looks, health,
personal taste... everything.

Advice to just smile at people and they will like you is bogus. There aren't
any tricks... and if there are any, they are not this simple.

------
sho
While good-natured, this article is suspiciously generic and I question its
applicability to what I would consider the "hacker" stereotype, unless what
you are wishing to "hack" are social barriers. Let me run through the list:

1\. Smile

This sounds like something very easy to get wrong.

Some people smile a lot; some don't. Some people smile too much. One should
not be afraid of smiling, but smile only according to how much is natural or
merited. I would question any conscious attempt to modify or fake this outward
emotional indicator.

2\. Be easily impressed, entertained, and interested.

How easily? I've made the mistake before of pretending to be interested in
whatever random stream of crap is currently amusing $whoever. I am inevitably
rewarded by being forwarded plenty of lolcats, dumb videos, or 3rd-hand
"memes", and on and on. I usually have to end up blocking such people.

Look, intelligent people are not easily amused. If you want to fool the
receptionist into thinking you're "fun" then go right ahead and pretend she's
interesting but you'll regret it.

3\. Have a friendly, open, engaged demeanor.

Again I am not sure if I am reading a friend-making manual or a salesperson's
guide. I have never made a friend because they leant towards me, nodded, and
said "uh-huh". What kind of ego-stroking nonsense is this?

I'll stop there; this list is ridiculous. Who here has ever made a real friend
based upon any of these principles, or even evaluated someone highly because
of them? Hell, some of my best friends are complete pricks. But at least
they're interesting.

Play Mr Light-and-breezy all you want if you want to engage shallow people in
profoundly boring and meaningless conversations. But if you hate all that
crap, why invite it?

At a previous job it seemed the whole company talked about Rugby all the time.
Seriously, 50% or more of all conversations were about, or started from,
Rugby. "Do you follow the rugby?" "I'm _obsessed!_ " etc etc et fucking
cetera. People would ask me if I'd seen the weekend game or followed a team or
X, Y or Z and I'd just say "I'm not interested in Rugby". That shut them up
good and quick. But you know what? I didn't care, because _I am not interested
in Rugby_.

The same principle could apply to this whole list. Who are you trying to fool?
And why do you want people to like you, anyway? If you're smart, other smart
people will recognise it, and you'll accrete friends. As long as you meet
_some_ people, and there is some worthwhile thing about you, you can hardly
avoid striking up friendships. And they will be real friendships, based on
merit and natural kinship.

Interesting people seek out and find other interesting people. Forget all this
"smile and look into each others' eyes" crap, just be interesting! Sure you
might not win the adoration of the celebrity gossip brigade but trust me, you
don't want to talk to them anyway.

This article is titled wrong: it should be "How to be superficially likable".
It's missing the accompanying articles of "Why would you want to be
superficially likable" and "The cost-benefit analysis of making boring people
think you are interested in them". You might well have some benefits in mind
(those receptionists can be quite cute, after all) but it's hardly a foregone
conclusion that "the more inane chitchat you make, the happier you are".

~~~
philh
Why do I want to be superficially likable? Because I meet many people for only
brief periods of time; not enough for them to learn how deep and interesting I
may be. At the same time, I don't want them to think that I'm boring, or that
I didn't like them. Maybe we'll meet again in future. Being superficially
likable is social lubricant.

I agree you can't forge deep friendships on the basis of anything other than
mutual compatibility, and trying to fake that is doomed to failure. But casual
friendships are open to hacking, and that's what the advice in this article is
about. Casual friendships can also be the starting point for deeper ones, so
messing them up is probably inadvisable.

------
3pt14159
The one about smiling is soooo true. Same with laughter. Has to be real, but
it really does help.

------
kubrick
"Trait Transfer" is an interesting idea, one that had not particurly occured
to me in my 45 years on Earth. I'm gonna work on that one.

------
dawson
I don't see how by changing the way you really are or act, and pretending to
be impressed or entertained is going to help you make friends? Because, you're
not being "you", and surely that's the whole point? I want people to like me
for me, and I want to be friends with people who I sincerely find entertaining
and interesting. If you're pretending, well... might as well join Twitter and
make yourself feel better with hundreds of followers (Friends?) who don't
really give two shits about what you say, if they even read what you're saying
(doubtful). If it makes you feel better about yourself... I guess.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_you're not being "you", and surely that's the whole point?_

You need to be careful with the notion of "just being you". That phrase is
based on a specific conception of what "you" means: "You" are a Platonic ideal
personality that exists independently of its instantiation, your physical body
and its actions are a window on this One True You, and the best modes of
expression are the ones through which the One True You is most clearly
visible.

But this is just a mental model. And it's not always the most useful model.
Here's a different model: "You" are a product of your environment as well as
your mind. When you're writing on HN you're a different person than when
you're writing for Twitter. When you're writing for business you use a
different voice than when writing for pleasure.

When you make a deliberate effort to smile, to enjoy people and be
entertained, _you are a different person_. You're not necessarily just
impersonating a happy and interested person -- you might be surprised to find
that you genuinely are happy and interested! You'll have a lot more friends.
You'll get better practice at making friends. Various feedback mechanisms will
kick in: biological ones, social ones. You'll be a different person than you
are when you sit alone in your apartment.

There is nothing insincere about having multiple aspects of your personality,
cultivating them, and applying different ones in different situations. We all
do this. Humans are far too complicated to be constrained by a single persona,
and our behavior and mood is conditioned on environment and on training.

~~~
dawson
"There is nothing insincere about having multiple aspects of your personality,
cultivating them, and applying different ones in different situations."

I agree, and I never said that, I was talking about _faking_ these emotions,
_pretending_ to be interested in someone or that they're amusing, when they're
in fact not. This _is_ insincere, and it's not being "you".

~~~
mdakin
Your statement reminds me of one of David Reynolds's concepts discussed in his
book _Constructive Living_. Which was an interesting and quick read although
somehow a bit unsatisfying. I've not thought about the "why" of that
satisfaction point so I can't really recommend (or not) the book other than to
say it's a quick read and has some redeeming qualities so it might be worth
looking at.

Anyway, the actual concept concerns a weakness with the English language that
actually impacts the thinking of native English speakers. And I think your
thinking is falling into that pattern. The issue is that English blurs the
concept of feeling an emotion and the doing of an emotional action. And it's
useful to NOT blur those concepts into one thing. Specifically because by
doing-X you can actually bring about feeling-X inside yourself.

English leads you to believe that your current feeling is somehow decoupled
from your actions. When in reality you can actually control your feelings by
taking actions.

So for example in this case by genuinely doing-interest in someone (regardless
of whether you feel-interest initially) you will find you actually soon enough
feel-interest in them.

You are a process not an entity and you can modify your own code.

