The Jordan Harbinger Show - 670: Vanessa Van Edwards | The Science of Succeeding with People

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Vanessa Van Edwards (@vvanedwards) is the lead investigator at human behavior research lab Science of People and the author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People and Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication. [Note: This is a previously broadcast episode from the vault that we felt deserved a fresh pass through your earholes!] What We Discuss with Vanessa Van Edwards: How can nonverbal communication affect the first impression you make to someone — even if they’re just hearing your voice over a telephone call? Explore the science of popularity — what makes the cool kids so cool? Understand the difference between social attraction and romantic attraction — and why they both matter. Find out what we can learn about people from their photographs — especially on dating sites. What interesting patterns turn up in researching episodes of reality television shows Blind Date and Shark Tank? And much more… Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/670 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss our conversation with FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss? Catch up with episode 165: Chris Voss | Negotiate as If Your Life Depended on It here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. Men get such a bad rap for wanting to see women with skin. Actually, the hottest women did not show skin, but the hottest men did. I asked my research, I was like, no, like, this cannot be right. Like, we got to go back.

So the men who had their shirts off, who had low-cut shirts who were, like, in a towel, those were the hottest men by far, but the women who showed a lot of cleavage, shot a lot of leg, nope, they did not. So the hottest women did not show a lot of skin. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger.

the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional Emmy-nominated comedian, mafia enforcer, Russian spy, or hostage negotiator, and each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about it, our starter packs are where to begin. of our favorite episodes organized by topic to help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do

here on the show. Topics like persuasion and influence, negotiation and communication, abnormal psychology, scams and conspiracy debunks, crime and cults, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, one from the vault, with my good friend Vanessa Van Edwards. She's a behavioral investigator, body language expert, and author, and of course, friend of the show, we're going to talk about the science of popularity, different types of attraction in both the personal and professional realm, nonverbal signals using blind date research, and what we can

learn about people from their photographs, especially on dating sites. There's a whole lot more in this one. So, enjoy this throwback episode with Vanessa Van Edwards. So you're a behavioral scientist? Is that fair? Investigator researcher. Yeah, creepy people watcher. Creepy people watcher. Yeah, sign me up for that club. Tell me about some of the studies that you've been doing recently because, well, what I like about what you do is you don't just go, hmm, this sounds like a cool thing that I should pretend is true and then write a book about it. You actually test some of what you're doing here. Yeah. So what I try to do mostly is look for puzzles, especially puzzles where we have this

idea that something could work, but we're not sure how or what's the action steps. So like, for example, we hear all the time about first impressions. Oh my goodness. There's so many articles about it, we talk about it. And I thought, okay, we talk about real life first impressions. We talk about digital first impressions, but how about the phone? Right. Oh, yeah, sure. I'm on the phone all day long. You do podcasts. Like, my first impression was that stupid comment I made a few seconds ago, right? And I'm like, how about just audio. So I was like, okay, there's very little studies on this, but that is a very practical thing for people who spend all day on the phone. What if we took the first impression on the phone, which is just hello? Hello. Yeah. Right? Hey, whatever.

Yeah. You took that. And you're just a little. You took that. And you're just, you took that. And you try different variables with it. So, for example, if someone power posed, they stood with their hands on their hips and real broad. So right now I'm real broad. Or hands free. Hands free. Hands free. Superman, Starfish, whatever. And you're like, hello. Does that change if you then go into defeated posing? So you cross your arms over your chest. Hello. Right. So like, for example, for people who are listening, I'm going to do a hello with a couple different micro expressions. And I want you to see if I sound different to you. Okay. So this is my broad happiness micro expression. Hello? Now I'm going to do a sadness microexpression. This is the most depressing face I can make.

Hello? It's different. It's a little bit different. It's different. Okay. So we recorded the same people doing different forms of hello, body language and micro expressions. And then we asked random participants and thank goodness we have lovely people who play in our lab to rate these people on charisma, intelligence, and likability. So hard without seeing them. Can people tell when they're not looking is a question. Like you think it's hard, but people, like, oh yeah, this person sucks, they suck. People have no problem, like just... So they're confidently making that judgment.

So, and what we do is we have it split up so that you don't obviously know you're listening to the same person. We have like this sort of blind trial. And so we just asked someone, listen to this person answer the phone. How likable are they on a scale of 1 to 10? And people rate them. After multiple trials, we have to do multiple trials with it, we found that there are distinct differences between the micro-expressions and body language you make and the impressions that people

have of you. So, for example, one of the big ones was anger, specifically the anger microexpression. So anger, we talked about this. I'm good at that one. Yeah, yeah. It's a natural state for you. It's a macro expression, right? Like if you tighten your eyebrows and you harden your lips, it changes the flow of oxygen.

So if you say, hello, like that's a very harsh. Because you're getting a physical manifestation of that, it's not just your mindset. It's your tension and your vocal cords and all that stuff shows up. Exactly. And that came across as lower in likability, right? because we don't want to be friends to someone who's very... Story of my life. Right.

But higher in confidence. Really? And that's an interesting one. That's interesting one. I think why a lot of guys start off with the scowl. And you look at magazines like Maxim for basically for kids. And if you're reading that, get rid of that crap. Those guys are all scowling and looking mean because it looks masculine or cool or confident,

but it's a more basic interpretation of that emotion. And I think it's like very, it's what we think of as masculine. Yeah. Right? So like I'm very interested in like, how we perceive masculinity or femininity. And so if you think about anger, specifically a man who is angry, it means that he feels confident in whatever his opinion is.

So in a way, anger is sort of a symptom of confidence. And that's why I think, and I don't know why people in our study perceive the angry hello as being very confident. So these are the kind of studies that I like to do because I find them very practical in the sense of like, if you're in a bad mood, should you pick up the phone? right? If you are feeling like at the top of your game and you're really happy, is that going to help you make a sales call? So I think that it helps us think about... I mean, my gut says yes. My gut says yes too. That was my hypothesis.

Right. So we're still running. We're in the last trial of the experiment. Oh, good. So we're still running it because I want to see. So we do kind of crazy experiments like that. Let me know if you need more angry guys. I volunteer. People will know if I have Jordan, if I have you doing all the facial times, who will be like, this is fuck a Jordan Harbinger. This is the A-hole micro-expression. I recognize that voice. What about power posing? You mentioned that.

I love it. And we interviewed Amy Cuddy. She's got one of the most popular TED Talks of all time. However, what we've now read in Scientific American Mind and other reputable places is that, hey, no one's been able to reproduce these results that supposedly came about in the study. I'm not saying Amy Cuddy did this on purpose or anything like that. I'm just saying, I think there's some flaw in the theory here. Yeah, so we had the exact same problem.

This is very sad. like Amy Kuddy's, she has many other studies. Like, this is not the only one. We were teaching it. We would do all kinds of exercises with it. It was originally in my book. And when all this came out, we decided to remove the slides. We decided to remove it from my book. And so when I dug into the research on this to see, is there any truth other than this one

study that's not replicated? What I realized is I think that people are not seeing what she was trying to say, which is that there is a universal gesture of pride. So, for example, separate research from the University of Bruey. British Columbia found that athletes across cultures make the same body language when they win or lose a race. Oh, right. The whole blind Olympian runner doing the same thing.

So I say to myself, okay, maybe it doesn't change your testosterone levels. Okay. But we do know that universally, when you feel pride, you take up space, you expose your torso, and when you feel defeated, you crumble in. That is a very helpful nugget, no matter if it increases your testosterone levels or not. Sure, right. We decided we don't not teach power posing at all. What we do is we've taken out the hormone references.

And I think it is important to understand how much space you take up in the world indicates to others and yourself how confident you feel. Sure, the whole taking up space, nonverbal communication, masculine and feminine body language and things like that definitely still holds up. And the hard part is, and we don't have to get too much into the science of academia, but this is why I think that it's so hard to do real good research. I had a choice in my career and I graduated from college and it was like, okay, do I go get a master's in a PhD and run, you know, real research science with grants and I get academically,

you know, published? Or do I open up shop right now? And instead of having 36 seniors in college who take an experiment, have 22,000 people around the world take it. And so I've decided to say no to academia because the pressure there to falsify results or change your hypothesis, Publisher Parish is the thing they say there? Publish or Parish. I don't want to do either of those things. No. And so that I think is one of the things where I think that there's a new, I'm hoping that

we can usher in a new area of citizen science research with big data, right? Like 20,000 people, lots of different demos, right? Like not all one age group. I mean, we know so much about college seniors. And I think that, you know, psychology, specifically, people who need extra credit in psychology classes. Like that's what we know about. outlined, those genotypes are completely mapped.

We know that is so well, but like the results are different if you ask a 45-year-old woman. I mean, they're going to be different. The problem is, is we have to try to find research where they're actually testing a real percent of the population. It's really hard to do. There has to be, there has to be capitalist motivation in there. Maybe Elon Musk will change that. Yeah, Elon, get on it, man. Fun some research.

Come on. Come on. Catch up. One of the reasons I love your work so much is because you hate the words, be, or the advice, be yourself, find your passion. be more authentic. Yeah, so I was one of those kids in school. So I hated camp. I hated recess. Like all the things that other kids loved. Like we're just like tors.

Oh my God. And kittens. Like I hated it because I just like did not get along with other kids or I was just like really shy. And so my parents being very trying to be as supportive as they could. They would say like, be yourself. Yeah. Thanks, mom. Just be nice to the other kids.

Try that and got beat up. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And then once you got into the dating world, it was be authentic and someone will love you for you. And I would look at this advice and just be like, this is impossible and it means nothing. Yeah.

And so I like to dig into like what does that actually mean from a scientific perspective? And for me, that means breaking down authenticity or passion or being nice into actual action steps in science. Sure. I would love to hear about that because of course when I hear and what I translate be yourself to mean is be as comfortable around this perfect stranger. and have the same sort of emotional triggers that you have on your friends and family who've known you for years, except somehow magically do that in the first three minutes of you meeting this other person, which is literally impossible. It's actually impossible. I totally agree. So I think this is the perfect time to talk about the science of popularity. Yes. I was always kind of fascinated by the cool kids in school. Who wasn't? That was what made them cool. They had nothing else going for them.

They had like this cloud of amazingness, right? They would just like walk around and everyone wanted to be them. I swear to you they would wear like whatever, overall, slap bracelets, and like everyone the next day was wearing it. You clearly grew up in the same time as me. You know what I'm saying. You know what I'm saying. What is it? Day glow? Was that? Yeah, day glow.

And like I wore so much glitter for a couple of years that like I still have it in like sheets and suitcases. Got it. There's so many inappropriate comments in there. Not with the glitter. Really? No. No. Come on.

They had like the roll on glitter sticks that you'd put on your, no. Not no. You're like shaking your head. I got beat up enough in middle school. I didn't need to put glitter on. No, roll on glitter for you? No. So I actually found like an old tube of it in my childhood home.

And I was like, I'm going to wear this. And like my mom was like, it's probably like toxic by now. Yeah. This is like 20 years old. Or always was toxic. Yeah, always was like. Anyway, I was always kind of interested with the mysteriousness of the cool kids. And so I finally found this study that looked at the science of popularity.

What they did is they went to high schools and they surveyed kids for their popularity rankings, why certain kids were popular. They followed them. That's kind of creepy. It sounds like terrible when I said that out loud. But yeah, they observed the children in their natural habitat. Got it. So they found, can you guess what was the distinguishing factor that made the popular kids popular? Oh, man, there's probably a lot, but the distinguishing factor? There was a couple. You're right. But like one of the big ones. Oh, it's no. I don't know. I don't know. So they found, the first thing they found, they dug into it more, was that the most popular kids smiled the most during the day. Actually, that surprises me.

Okay. Wait, wait. I was, like, kind of bummed by that. Actually, like, when I first read it, I was like, like, okay, like, I don't want to like smile at everyone on the street. Like, I knew that. Okay, like, it kind of bummed me out. I thought that was boring. And the second, where they researched second was that the distinguishing factor between what makes a kid popular is that they like the most other students.

That also surprises me. That one surprised me. So it wasn't actually that they were most liked, although they were. The popular kids themselves actually liked the most of their other classmates. It's like Dale Carnegie's be interested in other people to get them interested in you. It was sort of like finally the science version of this. And for me, it was the first time where I got a practical, like even Dale Carnegie and I love his work, be interested to be interesting. Okay. Okay. I like it. It sounds more clever maybe than it is. Yeah, and it still sounds a little fuzzy to me. But like more people, now that's something that I can work with because specifically growing up, I was afraid of everyone. I was afraid of everyone. I was very pessimistic. I always sort of would assume the bad. I would assume that people didn't like me. I would assume that they would hurt me. I would assume that they would reject me. And so thinking about, wait a minute, like this isn't actually trying to get them to like me. It's actually, how can I find a way to like them? That was something that was very specific. So now, in the last few years, a lot of what I do when I talk about likeability is finding ways that you yourself can actually find something attractive about someone else. This is interesting because when I was in middle school, not the greatest years of, well, anyone's life probably. Even the cool kids in middle school are like, oh, that was so awful.

But when I went to high school, I had started lifting weights in middle school and started become a really good athlete in high school. And then, you know how you get to reinvent yourself in high school? I kind of pulled the trigger on not only am I going to be a good athlete, but I'm all also going to be like one of the smart geeky kids. And so I managed to straddle the fence between those worlds, which in high school works for the first time in your entire life. And it was an accident. It wasn't some grand plan. But it does make sense that you have to like the most amount of people because I decided it's cool to like the nerdy geeky people now because I'm in

that world. But also I have to like my teammates and all my teammates friends and all the other people on the sports teams because I'm on the team too. I'm not just going to dislike all these other folks. So I ended up with this great number of people that I liked and that turned out, I still had the self-worth issues where I was like, they're going to figure out I'm not one of the cool kids like the imposter syndrome. But later on, towards the end of high school, you know, and you do the yearbook thing and all that. I found out like, wow, a lot of people really like me that I'm surprised even knew who I was. Yes. And so in a way, when you hit high school and you had these two interests that emerged, your amount of people that you liked doubled. Right. Yeah, sure, easily.

easily or at least. And so all of a sudden, you're liking all these people because it's okay for you to like them, right? It's okay to like the nerds or whatever. It's okay to like the jocks. That also made it then okay for them to like you. And so what they found was is the smile and nod in the hallway was actually a very important indicator of popularity. So the smiles were recognition smiles. They were not suck up smiles. They were not, I'm happy all the time smiles. They were specifically like, hey, how are you? That was what indicated popularity. And that to me, I was like, okay, like now we're talking. What's interesting about that also is it matched our Shark Tank research. Shark Tank research. Yes. So I don't know if you have a lot of entrepreneurial listeners,

but I love Shark Tank. And I was like, what are the body language patterns in Shark Tank? You know, what can we look at? So I had one of my research, Jose Pena, looked at 497 all of the pitches on Shark Tank. Oh, he had watched a lot of Shark Tank. He watched a lot of Shark Tank. So he analyzed all the pitches, 495 or 97 of them, and looked for body language patterns. And what we found was the successful entrepreneurs typically walk down that hallway, the doors opened, and they would take their place in the carpet, and usually they would smile and nod at one or two of the sharks. And we found that somehow it indicates a kind of congeniality, it like hooks that shark in. Not every time, but inevitably, usually those were one of the last, they were one of the sharks to make an offer or one of the

last sharks to go out. And I was like, this is the same thing as a science popularity article. In a way, if I were to see you and be like, hey, right, and smile and nod at you, I'm saying, like, I see you, I hear you, you're my friend. It happens in Shark Tank. It happens in high school. It's a very kind of easy thing to think about, I think. So then there's a little takeoff from that, a little segue from that. I feel like you would be well served if you're trying to persuade a group of people to look for the person who's going to be most receptive to also liking you back. Because, for example, on Shark Tank, Cuban will still be like, oh, I liked you for a second. I'm still out your idea sucks and you're a fraudster and I hate everything about you.

I love when he does that. I love when he does that. Same with Mr. Wonderful, for example. But you could probably really get away with doing that with Robert Hershevac because he just feels bad even if he hates your product and we invest in stuff. And he will give his money to you. He'll be like, here's $300,000 because I don't want you to feel bad about yourself. 100%. So I think of it a little differently.

Maybe a little bit more of a positive way. That's like a terrible way to say it. But okay, so I think of it like, who is the person in this group or in this room who's most likely to go grab a coffee with me? Yeah, sure. Like, so I have gotten in the habit, like, at conferences or at parties. I would go and sort of be like, oh, like, what's my opening line? Like, what do I say? Where do I stand?

And what I found is that if I could find someone who I felt comfortable saying, hey, you want to go eat something or grab something from the bar, that was actually the best way for me. So now I'm the person at every conference who's like, hey, come sit with me. hey, do you want to sit here? Like, I used to be, you know, like when you're getting a meal at a conference, people are like wandering around the tables, like looking for somewhere to sit. It is the same thing in the cafeteria. So I now will say, hey, are you looking for a seat? Come sit with me.

Come join us. Make eye contact with people who look lost. That's an easy one. So like I have made that my mission. I have made more friends that way, more contacts that way, than just trying to cold approach someone. I agree with that. The more people you can rescue at a mixer or a conference,

the more you're going to have essentially your little tribe. Because if you meet people at a conference, it's their first year there and you say, hey, we're doing dinner tonight. Do you want to come? You can have dinner with 35 frequent people, and you're the leader of that group, and it stays that way for years and years. Same thing with speakers at events. If they're like, I'm in Malibu at this event, and I've never been here.

And you go, look, me and some of the other speakers are going to go grab something or me and some of the, do you want to come with us? They'd love to meet you. They're just like, good. I don't have to go back to my hotel and watch CNN for. three extra hours. And so there's also some practical tools here is one thing you should always know. Always when you go to events is you should always know the best coffee in the area.

Yeah, there you go. But if you say to someone, hey, like there's a really good coffee place, it's like three blocks away. It's better than the Starbucks in this joint. Like, do you want to go get some? Almost always people will be like, oh, really? And you're like, yeah, it's really good. So know the best coffee place in the area.

Yelp can help with that, by the way. You don't have to have been there before. Right. Like it's all like. Fake it. Or you could say, Jordan. I saw that on Yelp, this place got. high ratings. Got it. Yeah, you could do that. Yeah, you could do that. I think that's a little bit

more. Back to the original theme of authenticity. Thank you. You're like, just lie about it. I'm learning so much right now. I do human line detection Jordan, so I try not to encourage people just like totally fake it. Yeah, no, by fake it, I just mean you can go somewhere with it that you haven't been before. I think a lot of people when they're networking or doing any kind of relationship development, they feel the sense of imposter syndrome when they first start, which is going up to your last example of meeting somebody or looking at. someone in the eye and inviting them to sit with you, a lot of people are afraid to be the person who says, why don't we all go get lunch right now? Because they don't want them to go, well, we already ate.

And then it's like, damn it, I knew I shouldn't have said that. And you pull the Chris Farley, stupid and face palm type thing. And I agree with you. And I've actually, it's happened to me multiple times where I'll say, hey, do you want to get coffee? They're like, oh, I already got coffee. But almost always they will have like that, we like to be liked. We like to be invited places. So remember that that is actually a gift just asking someone that. And so oftentimes, they might say no, but like you've just gained an ally. There's reciprocity there still. Yeah, for sure.

So know the best coffee places. Know the hidden lunch spots. And also I think that personality wise, I don't know if you want to talk about the science personality, but I love the science personality. And openness is like. Science of personality. All right, okay.

Yeah, so like openness is one of the five personality traits. And I'm a very high open person. I like trying new things. I like adventure. I like people who are also high open. So my best friends, my husband, like people who are close to me are high open. So I try to attract that by also appealing to that part of their personality.

So I will say, hey, like, I read there's this secret taco spot about a mile away. I have no idea if it's even going to be good. Do you have any idea, like, do you have any desire to like adventure with me over lunch? The right people will say yes. People who are like, oh, I don't know. Secret tacos sounds dangerous. You know, people do say no to that. Yeah.

And I'm okay with that because the people who are like, oh, what? secret tacos, I'm like, you're my person. You're my person. We're going to have better conversation. We're going to get along a way better. So I actually use it as a measure of how I'm going to get along with someone. That really helps. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Vanessa Van Edwards.

We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it's because of my network, and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. This course is about improving your networking and connection skills and inspiring others to develop a personal and professional relationship with you. It'll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker. That's jordanharbinger.com slash course.

And by the way, most of the guests you hear on our show already subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, back to Vanessa Van Edwards. Do you know what escape rooms are? Yes, I love escape rooms. So we love high open people.

Come on. Yes. escape room thing. Yes. So Jenny and I are obsessed with this. Jenny's my wife. We've done almost 100 of these things. We'll go to a conference at another city,

and she always wants to try the new games. And so what we do, instead of going, does everybody want to go to dinner and then sit awkwardly at opposite ends of a 13-foot table and not talk? We just go, look, let's go get some food and then go to this escape room. And some people go, no, I'm good.

I'll be at the bar. And you go, fine. That's not your person. Or it's the person that's not going to be, right, in the midst. They shouldn't be. her anyway. Right. Yeah. So I think that having those kinds of things in your back pocket, and I do this in new cities, I do this in my city. Like, I try to have that because I think that it's also you attract your people. And this, I think, works really well with dating as well. So, like,

with dating, I know that you want to be open, but you, there's personality traits to go better together. So, like, high open people tend to do better with high open people. The reason for that is because if you're high open and you marry or with a low open person, you constantly feel held back. You're always stuck in their routine, which is inside their comfort zone. driving you crazy. And if you're a low open person, who's with a high open person, you constantly feel like you're not good enough. And so that is a very hard personality trait. Sure. And opposites. Another one that's hard for opposites is conscientiousness. So conscientiousness is attention to detail, routine, scheduling. Like, I'm very high in contentiousness.

Like alphabetizing gives me an adrenaline rush. Like to-do list is like a hobby that I like list. And so I'm high in conscientiousness. I do really well other people who are high in conscientiousness. So I will like when I send proposals out, I make them very detail-oriented. I have lots of lists and bullets. Yeah, your show prep is the work of art right here. It's all formatted perfectly. And I also love gold stars. So like I love that. Accolades. Yes. I did like my research for you. Like I made a little note list. I know that that will appeal to someone who appreciates that. And so I'm able to work with people who, and that helps us build a faster relationship. So I think that those are ones that like you always kind of want to look for someone who's kind of your match.

Can I give an opposite one? Yeah, I was going to say what happens if we find ourselves stuck in a mismatch, but go over the opposite first. Yeah, good question. So we will talk about that. The opposite one is neuroticism. So neuroticism is one of the five personality traits. And gosh, it's like a dirty word whenever I ask you, like, are you high neurotic?

Probably. And like people are always like, I don't want to tell you. Like they get like really like awkward about it. So neuroticism is, that's how I know. That's how I know. Yes, that's how you know. So neuroticism is not a bad trait. It is our emotional stability.

It's how reactive we are to external circumstances. And what's interesting about neuroticism is high neurotics, most of them carry a long form of a certain gene. And this is the serotonin transport gene. So not to get too technical, but serotonin is the chemical that makes us feel calm. So it calms us down. It makes us feel okay in the world. If we get into a car, like we almost get into a car accident, someone almost hits us. We get adrenaline and we get cortisol.

And then what when we calm, oh, we're fine. we're okay, that's actually serotonin trying to get us back to normal. Neurotics produce less serotonin and transport it most more slowly. So when they almost get into a car accident, it actually takes them longer to calm down because chemically, physically, they do not have all the resources they need to calm down. So what happens in a marriage or in a partnership or in a friendship is the high neurotic is like, oh my God, that was horrible. And the lone neurotic is like, it's all good.

Like, we're fine. Never say calm down. Never say calm down. Never tell a high neurotic, it'll all be okay. Yeah. I'm trying to calm down, but the transport of my serotonin is taking longer than I expected. This is exactly what I say. This is exactly what I say, because I'm also a high neurotic. I share this because for those of you who are low neurotics, you need to understand that we're actually talking about a chemical difference in our reactions. Okay. So in that case, sometimes it's actually better to be opposite. The reason for this is, is a high neurotic is very, very good at what if scenarios. They're very good at

preventing problems from happening. They think through all potential. They worry a lot. Right. Sure. Right. Like I think of like every backup plan to a backup plan to a backup plan, which means that I very rarely have huge crises or problems. But alone erotic is great in a crisis. So they're the ones who are the nice, level-headed people. They're the rock. They're calm. So it's actually really helpful. You have really nice relationships business as well as romantic when you can have both because if you have someone who's preventing the crisis, someone who's good in a crisis, you're covered. Perfect, right. Somebody will have their head on straight, both before, during, and after. Yeah, if you're both onerotic, and research has found that two loan erotic in a relationship

are more likely to be in financial debt. That makes perfect sense, because nobody's thinking, what if this doesn't work out the way we expect? Exactly. They're like, oh, we don't need to save for that. It'll all be fine. And me as a hydrodotic is like, are you crazy? We've got to have a college for our kid that doesn't exist, right? Like, that's me. In case they go to college in 20 years. In case I have a child, right? Like, it's like that. So I think that that's an opposite one. So you don't always have to be the same. In fact, there is a lot of beauty and differences, but you have to pick your trait, I think, carefully. Sure. I think that one could cause a lot of friction in a relationship for a long time. If you don't understand the mechanics of it. So, like, my husband's a

lone erotic, I'm a high neurotic. I leverage that for the strengths it provides. I know he is my rock. I know that if I'm feeling really worried or nervous, I can talk through because he's so calm, right? He won't get upset with me. Whereas like my high neurotic friends, I know that I cannot call them when I'm worried, they will make me more worried. Right. They, like, hype me up even more. Yeah. So, like, I think that it can be very detrimental for a relationship if you don't know how to make it work.

It's the same thing in this answering your other question is, okay, so let's say that you wish that you heard the same level of conscientiousness, but you're just not. Having the same battle over and over again about who's going to do the dry cleaning or who's going to do the laundry or the routine that is being messed up, you're going to have that fight for the rest of your life. You cannot change someone's personality. orientation. You just can't. Our personality is 35 to 55% genetic, and the rest of it is formed usually in our childhood. It's very rare that it changes. The only personality traits that change

with AIDS is that women tend to get more extroverted and men tend to get more open. That's with age over a lifetime. So who you married or who you're with, if that's their personality trait and you keep trying to change it. Yeah, don't bother wading it out. Never going to happen. It's like bang your head against the wall. What you're better, what you're more likely the better to do is to say, okay, this is their orientation. How can I work around this or with this? And I really believe in relationships and outsourcing. So, like, I know that I'm much better at certain things than my husband.

He is way better than me. Like, for example, he's really good at travel booking. He's not high in contentiousness. That's funny. That's the gen books all my stuff. Because I can't eat. I'm like, oh, I bought the flight for the wrong day. That's me.

That is totally me. So, like, even though he is lower and conscientious than me, he is so much better at that than me. Whereas, like, I'm pretty good at, like, house stuff, making sure, like, the garden is taken care of, like, making sure there's food in the fridge. Like, that is, like, cake to me. Whereas booking flights, bill paying, that is not my thing. So we've outsourced where our conscientiousness natural strengths are. So it's totally okay if you're different, but, like, don't play against the strengths, play with them. What does he do for work?

He's in finance. Oh, okay. Financial. He does marketing for a bank. Gotcha. I was just wondering if he was also studying human behavior or just hearing a lot about it. He kind of has to. Also, I have the kind of household.

I feel bad for him sometimes. Like, I always have experiments running, like, including on him. So he just never knows what he's coming home to. We're very high open. So, like, it's always an adventure in our house. He never knows what I'm going to be trying when he gets home. So he'll just walk in and you're like, I knew you were going to go to the refrigerator. Yes.

I knew you were going to get a banana instead of an apple. Sometimes I try to predict his food habits to see if I can predict them before he knows them. It's pretty great. Right. Marginally useful to the public. You know, it's useful. Marginly to know my husband's food taste. Yeah, yeah, exactly, or anyone's for that matter.

Although, hey, look, if you can get the science behind what people want to eat before they know it. Hey, that would be a good app. Yeah, if there's an app for that, there will be an app for that. We talked to pre-show about indicators of interest and looking to see if people were going to be interested in you and things like that. It's like, how do you know if somebody wants to start a conversation with you? Those people are naturally more receptive to you starting a conversation with them. Yeah. And indicators of interest, for me, the first thing that comes to mind is proximity.

Is somebody close to you breaking psychological space for a reason that maybe doesn't quite make sense on its face? Like, you dropped your pen, but it went four feet in my direction. That's weird. Indicator of interest. How did that happen? Indicator of interest. So it's funny. That is right.

I think those are indicative of interest. What I was thinking when I was the way I used that term is I think, and I learned this for my business first and then I realized it was actually very helpful in the dating world and in friendship as well. So when I first started writing for my blog, I was writing to appeal. to everyone, right? Like I was taking a very science journalist perspective. I tried to make it, like, really just like it. Everyone would like it. It wouldn't offend anyone. It would be interesting for everyone. The problem is, exactly, exactly. No one liked it. I had a lot of ambivalent readers,

like people who would read it, but like not send up to a newsletter, not comment, not take any action. Very, like, few avid readers. And so when I started to put indicators of interest into my content, like, this is either for you or this is not for you. Oh, I got it. I totally missed the mark on No, but like that body language, there's also indicators of interest. I actually was thinking of it in terms of like verbal indicators. So for example, on a dating profile, you are better off, I think. Instead of trying to appeal to every fish in the sea, I think you're better off actually turning off 90% of fishes to get like the 10% of amazing ones.

Right. We've talked about this in the past on the show and a lot of people have different ways of doing this. And some ways are awful, in my opinion. Okay. But I totally agree with this, right? Because if you're trying to cast a wide net, it makes you a little bit vanilla. Yeah, and I also think energy is limited.

Our mental space, it's not infinite. And so if you are going on two or three dates a week and they're all kind of ambivalent, right? Like you're like, yeah, like the enemy in dating is not going on bad dates. It's going on ambivalent ones. If you go on an ambivalent date where you're like, this could work. Like, I could see it. Those are the most dangerous kind of relationships because they're the ones that drag on for weeks and months. And you're like, I don't know.

that you hear about where it's like you were engaged and now you're not engaged? What happened? And it's because somebody finally went, I just can't do this. Exactly. So that is, I think, what I'm talking about here is if you do not have indicators of interest, like polarizing ones, like flat out almost offensive ones. Like you should be offending some people. Like that's, those are the kind of indicators of interest I'm talking about. Then you are more likely to waste your time on ambivalent relationships that will suck up the energy before you can find the right one. So for example, like, If you have deal breakers, I think you should say them. I think that you should, like, in a nice way.

Okay. Like, why would you be hiding a deal breaker if you know that it's there? That's true. I guess I'm imagining what some people that I think are a little bit, maybe more juvenile are doing to screen people out where they'll write things like, no redheads. And it's like, what are you doing, man? You know what, though?

Such a superficial disqualifier. It is such a superficial disqualifier. But if you know that, like, you can't get it up when there's a redhead there. Like, why wouldn't you say that? If that's the problem, I feel like there's a, another issue involved. Well, yeah, maybe. But by all means, broadcast that in your profile to the rest of the world. And I love redheads. I love redheads, just for the record. Like, okay, here's an example of one, vegan. Okay. Okay, that's important. Okay. That's one where I think if you are

vegan, you're like, do I say this up front or do I wait? No, say it. Like, are you crazy? Or you do not want to date a vegan because you are a meat lover. Say that, right? Like, say, like, I am a huge bacon fan. Like, if you don't like bacon with me at every single, say, single morning, don't even bother to contact me. If eating bacon in the morning is wrong, I don't want to be right. Exactly. So anyway, I think that I think we should be more forthright with those because otherwise you get on date three and all of a sudden, you know, you realize, oh, wow, like she really is

like not going to ever eat steak with me. And if that's important to you, now, hopefully that is not the most important thing for you. But if that is something that's important to you, like, that should be on there. I think that dietary stuff is super important because it's not just, oh, well, you I don't want to eat dairy, I don't process it well. You know, raise your hand. If you're one of those, like, lactose intolerant people, there's a million.

Yeah. But if it's, I'm vegan because I'm super sensitive about the way animals are treated and I think about the environment a lot. And the other person you're dating is like, I don't care. I'm just wanting to make money because I work at, you know, investment bank or something like that. You're going to run into issues elsewhere, not just at restaurants. Yes.

This is going to be friction. So here are a couple things that I think are, like, very small but actually matter long term, like for long term happiness. So dietary. Yeah, like what you eat, how you eat. Morning or night person. In a relationship, it can be really hard if you have someone who's the opposite as you because you're constantly fighting a bedtime, wake up time, constantly.

And that will never change, right? Usually, if you're morning or night, it doesn't change over a lifetime. Another one is what you do to relax. I don't mean, like, what do you do to have fun? That's a different question. You mean introvert versus extroverted personalities and relaxation? Yes, but also even like you have the night and you want to recover from a really hard week, what do you do?

Okay. That piece, like, some people are like, order. in, watch a movie, hang out on the couch. Like, that's the idea. Other people are like, go out and party. Like, forget about my problems. Well, you're going to have a problem, my friends. So this is exactly what I meant by introverted versus extras.

So introverted people doesn't mean you have a medical excuse not to be social. It just means that your me time is how you recharge versus somebody who's naturally extroverted says, I need to get out of the house and go do something and be around friends and people because that's how they recharge. Yes. If you don't want to hang out with each other during your downtime because their idea of relaxing to you is completely exhaust. So I'm an ambiverts. Like I flip between the two. And most people from our studies are ambivorts. There's also this aspect of like, okay, maybe you're both ambivorts. Where do you recharge? So like certain ambivorts, like for example, loud concerts, loud bars, nightclubs, oh, they drain me so fast. However, I love like dinner parties. I love going to barbecues. So like my thrive locations are different. That also makes a difference of like maybe it's a couple people, but like is it a couple people in a loud nightclub or is it like going to concerts every weekend? And those are really good.

good early questions. I think I get those out of the way real early. Don't wait until you live together to find that out. Right. And if you live together and you find that out, then definitely don't get hitch thinking, I'm going to work on it. It's going to be fine. She'll change. Like, it will not. Good luck with that. Every email in my inbox that has a divorce in it starts with, I should have seen it coming, but dot, dot, dot, dot three paragraphs later. All the time. Wow. Yeah, all the time. A lot of people write, and I'm not laughing at it at all, it's tragic. horrible. Because the reason this person is not just going, we had a good run.

It was great. I'm moving on. It's usually, damn it, I just, I knew it, and I didn't listen to it, and I didn't do anything about it. Or, of course, there's other reasons. Like, I knew it, but I didn't think I could get somebody else that was equally XYZ and certain. And that is ambivalence.

Being in a relationship where you're like, yeah, it's pretty good. Could I do better? I don't know. You're asking yourself, could I do better? You have a problem. Yeah. Right? Like, same thing with a job, too, by the way.

I think, like, if you're constantly thinking that, it's time to start. It is. However, though, I want to qualify this. I think a lot of people conflate or confuse, can I do better with is what I thought important to me is still important to me. So, for example, and I want to clarify this because for guys, I'm getting married soon, right? So I'm thinking about all this stuff a lot. A lot of times guys go, so did you always date Asian women?

And I'm like, no, I've never done that before. And they're like, well, are you sure that's, you know, going to be compatible with you? And I thought, I just don't care about that. Like all of the, yeah, I like tall women that are blonde, like all those things I thought were mildly or super important. Not that I thought being a tall blonde was important, but a lot of the things I thought about. On your list.

Cultural, oh, I need to be somebody who's also in this culture or born in this place. None of that mattered. I found other things I didn't even know existed that mattered more. So your values do restructure over time. You just have to be really careful not to go, oh, my value is restructured because I can't get what I want, or my values restructured because this is what I find myself dealing with right now,

it has to be restructured because you've thought good and hard about it, and you realize this is less important to you and this is more important to you. Because I don't want guys to go, crap, I'm always thinking about, can I do better when I'm dating? Because men will never not probably think that for at least a minute. And I don't want guys being like, I need to break up with my fiancé now because I had a dream last night. that I dated somebody from a different...

That is a very, very good distinction. And remember that people look really different from their checklist. Yeah, and the checklist, the deal breakers checklist, we've probably talked about on other shows as well, but people do always look very different

than their checklist. And the checklist should be open to interpretation except in the areas of your core values, which we can go down that road. So I think that, like, looking at those and having indicators of the places where you really feel really strong about, we should be stating those upfront

as much as possible. That is going to, I think, get rid of the fluff of those ambivalent. So rather, I guess than these you call indicators of interest, it's more like qualifiers and disqualifiers, but I think we're just semantically. Yeah. Polarizers. Yeah. Women can't do that. No. Well, you could. It would just, it's a messier endeavor.

You just gave me a look like, really? Like, really? Have you not tried gubernating into the wind? What about the science of romantic attraction and social attraction as differentiated in your work? Yeah, so there's very little difference. And so I talk constantly about business crushes, social crushes, romantic crushes. And I think that we need to start thinking about attraction in professional settings. We try to separate that out. I don't mean like physical attraction. I mean like a magnetic desire to be with someone, a magnetic desire to incorporate an idea. I think that the more we can think about that in social relationships and business relationships, that I think brings a lot of spice to life. What I wanted to make a point here is that there's very little difference between attraction for professional versus social or romantic relationships.

There's not very much of a difference? No. Okay. So explain the minor differences that exist or maybe explain how they're all the same. Sure. So chemically, we're talking about connection. We're talking about oxytocin, which I think you talk about a lot. So I wear oxytocin necklace.

I don't know if you can. I wonder what that was, but I was like, that's definitely a molecule. It's a molecule. I guess I can't identify oxytocin without a label. You can't? No. So my husband was like, do you want a heart necklace? And I was like, I don't want a heart. I want the real deal. So we got an oxytocin one. So oxytocin is the basis of all relationships. And that is how we feel the safety, this belonging. And so we often talk about it in a romantic sense, right?

Like touch and cuddling and hugging like that all produces oxytocin. But actually, oxytocin is incredibly important in business. Why are you laughing? I just, why are you laughing at me? I was thinking, well, one, because I can't keep a train of thought for more than a few seconds, which is why I'm in this job instead of writing things. But I just, oh, God, I might as well to say it now, if I had that same necklace, or rather, if I were going to get a necklace, I would have to get the gland that secretes oxytocin.

And then I thought, what would that look like? And then I just lost track of everything that you were saying before. That's where my head went. What is the gland that's secreted oxytocin? I was thinking about that, and I couldn't come up with the answer. And I thought, can I weasel that question into this thread of conversation? Is it like the pituitary? What does that look like?

I don't know. It probably looks like a little. testicle. I imagine all glands look like, look like that. So could you imagine we're like a walnut around here? And someone's like, what's your necklace? And you're like, oh, it's the gland. Yeah, it's a gland. Secreats oxytocin. Get away from my kid. Oh, good. We can move on to the next question. It's fine. We're done. Just move on to the next question. It's fine. This is completely my fault for the record. I will take the blame on this tangent entirely.

I was going to go out anyway. All right, fair enough. What about the blind date research that you've done recently? Yeah. Okay. So one of the research experiments we did is I was looking, you know, blind date, classic, like, especially the 80s, the 90s version. It was so good. And I was like, I wonder if there's like a way to predict success of a blind date just by the first few minutes. You know, we talk, again, we talk about fresh impression all the time. So I had one of my researchers, Robbie Smith, analyze a hundred, like a random sampling of 100 blind date episodes. The TV show? The TV show. for lack of a better Why not? Right? I was like, let's just see.

Let's just see that these are people who have like, for some way they've been vetted to be together, like either for awful reasons or terrible or good reasons. Like, is there any prediction here of what's going to predict a successful date or not? Right. So I think it's similar to being set up. And that's what we happen to happens all the time. So he analyzed 100 different dates and there was a couple different interesting patterns. So one was that the more touch there was in the first, first two minutes seemed to break the physical barrier much faster and seem to be a having more sensitive weight, which is oxytocin. Okay, that wouldn't make sense.

Physical escalation, standard operating procedure. And I know that you guys talk about this, but there's something about that friend versus foe question that happens. So for women especially, we are constantly trying to figure out, are we safe with this person? And we don't necessarily consciously realize that, but that's what we're trying to assess at all times. So if there is no touch within the first few minutes, the friend or foe question just, lingers for us. Like it isn't answered for a really long time. So that initial touch is those first two minutes, that's the only opportunity you have to make an initial first touch until the very end of the day. Right. And then you've got that whole pressure. And the decision, of course,

has already been made in her mind. I'm not letting this person. Already been made. And I was actually talking to a friend about this who's dating right now. And I was saying, you know, women can usually guess if a guy is going to be a good kisser or bad in bed. He was like how? And I was like, their walk. Yeah, the walk. That's so funny. I was going to say the walk. Exactly. It is the walk. And he made me show him examples of people of men on YouTube walking in a good way and a bad way. And I think that... Hip tension and things like that. Stiffness, hip tension, not enough variability of movement.

I think that's what we're talking about. It's like, oh, could there be movement? And it's the same thing with touch. It's like if you reach out and touch the forearm or put the handle on the lower back, there is a variability of touch there of like, oh, like we're okay. And then you get that nice chemical oxytocin burst and it's good. We've seen, and this is anecdotal because we don't have a lab, But we've seen differences in touch from fingertips, palm of the hand, full arm, like basically

the more contact and the more kind of, and I'm very careful with this because I don't want guys to be like assaulting people right on the street. Please know. Please know. But it has to do with the amount of contact. It doesn't even have to be skin on skin. It can be just clothing everything. It has to do with the way that you guide someone else's body, how confident you are when you do that, which is one of the reasons.

Dancing is such a precursor to. Yeah. And I will, the addition that I will add here is your touch is only part one of what's important. Part two is her reaction to it. So let's say that you, you know, make a touch and like it doesn't go well. That actually tells you a lot about the person because if, for example, so if she pulls her arm away, she makes a grimace or a contempt microexpression, if she doesn't like lean into the touch, right? Right.

Okay. Like that actually, it's a very different kind of date. the questions that you're going to try to do are going to be more safety, security, comfort-based questions. Right? So you're going to try to assure her that you are someone who is a good match for her, that you want to have a good time, that she's comfortable. If she leans into the touch, okay, we're talking more adventurous now, right? Then you can go into, like, ideal trips and vacations and more exotic things. So that actually tells you a lot about how the date can go. It's never a deal breaker. It just gives you an idea of where you need to go with conversationally.

This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Vanessa Van Edwards. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. It allows us to donate to charities on your behalf and really keep everything rocking and rolling around here. To learn more and get links to all the discounts, they're all on one new mobile responsive page on our website, jordanharbinger.com slash deals. All those codes, all those URLs.

You don't have to memorize that stuff. You can also search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well. So please consider supporting those who support us. Now for the rest of my conversation with Vanessa Van Edwards. A lot of this stuff has to do with expectations as well. One of the ways which you can make somebody feel safe, especially in a dating scenario, is to talk about how your logistics prevent something potentially high pressure

from happening at the end of the date. So when I used to sense that when I was dating, if I sensed any issue with physical escalation in the beginning, I would say something like, I just want to keep an eye on the time because at nine, I have to go to my friend's house and handle something. That way they're like, oh, good, okay, He's going to his friend's house.

I'm not going to get set up to go up to his apartment or something like that. And then they just kind of go, oh, good. This is a final stopping time. Of course, saying you have to go to your friend's house kind of says, social proof. I have friends. Yeah, I'm not a serial killer who goes with his mom in the basement. So that would be the perfect thing to bring up if the touch shouldn't go well.

Right. Right. So, like, touch is never going to be a deal breaker, especially if you're staying like in the hand-arm region. But that would be, I would bring that up real quick. You can do it even before the touch if you need to. 100%. It can be the first thing. you say? Because worst-case scenario, it's like, do you have to go to your friend's house later? Right?

Like if everything does go on, then you go, just kidding, I don't have any friends. I live in the basement. Screw them. I don't know. I don't need to see those people. Exactly. So you can handle it logistically. It's such a, I'm very careful, again, with this stuff, because the last thing we want to do is given a how-to manual for people who are going to take advantage of this stuff. Yeah. It's also like, it's a way of taking down your anxiety and her anxiety. So I actually don't see it as a trick or a manipulation thing. I actually see it as a way of testing the waters so that you can have a better relationship. Like, if the touch doesn't go well, okay, like you learn something, maybe the first impression go great. And you're trying to make

comfortable and it's not working. Great. You have a shorter date. You know that isn't for you, and you end it. So I actually think just a way of speeding up an interaction to see is it's really going to work or not. That's how I look at it. It's always good to get it done a little bit early and get it done, I mean, by qualify or disqualify somebody. Because the worst, thing is when you're going out with somebody and you're on date number five and you're like, I just hate every minute of this. Why am I still here? Yes.

And the last one for the blind date thing that I wanted to mention was I noticed that the biggest predicted success was when the men showed up and acted like they were greeting an old friend. So warmth? Is that what we're looking at? Yeah. And like there wasn't anything like super specific that I could point to, but it was this feeling of like, oh, they must have already met. Now, I don't know if they actually did or any meat, I don't think so.

But like, if you greet someone, and I think this is for both men and women, if you greet someone like they're an old friend. even if you've met them for the first time, having that in your mind sets up the expectation that you want to be old friends. Like, it's the, the Pygmalian effect has been proven science. You did that outside. Yes. Tricky little. I do think we're old friends. We are, we are. We are old friends. It counts. Because that is, I think that like that sets up the pygmalian effect. The science is quite clear that when you expect someone to be a good friend, they often end up being a good friend. So physically it all sets that up too. I run an experiment with this very thing,

except without nonverbal communication necessarily being the focus. I actually tried, and this is years ago, and it sounds so dorky now, but I tried years ago just saying, you know, I really click with you. I feel like we've known each other for a really long time. And then even if they're like, well, I'm on the fence about that, they still might say something like, just to be polite, they'll often go, yeah, yeah, it's cool. And then they start to look for reasons to rationalize it.

And then a disproportionate number of those people did actually become really close friends. And I remember years later having conversations with many of them and going, yeah, you know, remember when we first hung out? And they're like, yeah, and you said, we were like old friends. And I was like, did you really believe that? And they're like, no, but I'm glad we're friends now. And I'm like, I didn't either. I was just testing. And they're like, you son of a but it makes perfect sense because you act as if. Yeah. And that's liking. That original principle we talked about about liking more people. That is what that is. When you say that, you're saying, like, I like you. I like you a lot. That's exactly using the science personality. Yeah, it's an

interesting and also clunky way to do it, which is probably why I haven't talked about it much in the last decade. But it's interesting concept to think about it. Also, you don't have to say it. You could just act it. You can act it, yeah. Right? And like greet people that way and talk to them as if they're an old friend instead of being like on a weird first date interview, which is like awful. The only hiccup with this is that it requires vulnerability. Very much. Because if you're not going to act as if and be vulnerable and be open like you would with an old friend, you're kind of just going through the awkward fake motions of pretending you have friends. And if you feel like you can't go out and even, like, attempt that, I don't think it's worth doing it.

Yeah, you have to have an element of warmth that you're either able to turn on convincingly so that you don't look like a used car salesman or actually be a person who's really good at being open kind of at the drop of the hat, which for me personally is actually kind of tricky. Yeah, usually the positive reinforcement you get from even a little bit of vulnerability is worth it. It is worth it. But it's a lesson that at least for me, I have to keep learning because I'm not naturally a very warm, at least very upfront, warm person. And that just comes from only child isms or whatever.

I don't know. Tell me about the hot or not stuff that's going on. Okay, so this white paper is not out yet. You just had that. This is a warm notepad. This is a warm not pad. It's been under my butt. I've been sitting on it because there was nowhere to put it.

Okay, so this white paper is not done yet. We just finished it. What we did was I wanted. This particular white paper is a kitchen refrigerator napet. That we have published. It's going to be a big white paper. Pocket size. Yeah, pocket size.

white paper. So we did a study on Hot or Not and literally the Hot or Not photos on Hottonot.com. We took a random sampling of I think we had over 400 photos and we looked at patterns compared to their scores. Okay. So I wanted to know what was it about the hottest women, the women who got, I think on Hot or Not, it's one to five ranking. So what are the women who are in the four range versus the men who are in the four range versus the women who are in the low range? So we found seven patterns. I thought we could play a game to see if you can, yes, what the patterns are. We can. Okay. I'm just trying to, I think I use that one. You don't look very. I'm very excited about that.

In the 90s, and I'm just wondering if my photo is still on there floating around. No, no, I'm not kidding. With my, yeah, looking much younger and much more in shape, I would imagine. I think I used, I think everyone put it up in like 10th grade. I don't know, like, it was like the cool website. You had to put it up and then be like, you'd be like, tell your friends, you'd be like, vote for me really hot. Vote me up.

Otherwise, yeah, my self-esteem is going to take a hit for 20 years. Maybe, maybe. Exactly. Okay, so seven patterns. I hope at home you can play with us, and Jordan is going to be, you have to be the one who guests. Okay, ready? Skin or no. skin. And so I'm guessing whether or not this person got upvoted for more skin or less skin.

You are guessing if the hottest men and women showed more skin or showed less skin. More skin for women especially. Okay, so you are actually incorrect. What? I know. Really? So get this. Men get such a bad rap for wanting to see women with skin.

Actually, the hottest women did not show skin, but the hottest men did. That is totally shocking. I was like, I asked my research, I was like, no, like, this cannot be right. Like, we got to go back and, like, look at this. So the men who had their shirts off, who had low-cut shirts, who were like in a towel, those were the hottest men by far, but the women who showed a lot of cleavage, shot a lot of leg, nope, they did not get the hottest. The hottest women did not show a lot of skin.

I suppose it maybe makes sense in the way that a lot of women who are trying to show extra skin are maybe making up for a deficiency in other areas. I think that is exactly what's happening. And I think that also looking at some of the actual photos, a lot of the women who were showing a lot of skin were showing less face. Oh, yeah, that's a problem. Like just their mouth. We get when you do that, like, hey, this is the left side of my face.

What's happening right now? What's happening on the right side? Where's your eye patch? That's exactly. So, do not worry for women listening and for men, a little skin might not be a bad idea. All right, next one. So looking at pictures of both men and women, what was the biggest buzzkill prop? So there was one item that when people had it in their photos, it like ruined their, like, no hot people had this prop in their photos.

Money? Nope. Can I try again? Yes, try again. And it's definitely not an animal. It's not an animal. There were dogs. No, dogs won't well.

Dogs won well, right? Those tests well. Buzzkill prop. I mean, a phone? So headphones didn't make a difference. Headphones did not. Headphones did not. So if we looked at actually pictures that had headphones, those did not affect score.

What about an actual phone, like selfie-style bathroom? Most people were, bathroom was a terrible context. That was a context killer. The prop that actually affected the score the most was sunglasses. Oh, that makes total sense. Right. And like, what's interesting about this, that makes logical sense, but so many people had it in their picture because you're out, you're at the beach. Well, you feel like you look cool, but the problem is we're not trying to look impenetrable.

We're trying to look open and inviting. Exactly. And no eye contact. And we get oxytocin from even looking at video eye contact. Sure. So sunglasses are killer. Make sure you do not have sunglasses in your profile picture. And headphones are okay.

You can totally be in the head. So headphones, towel with no shirt. Good. No sunglasses. Love it. Exactly. All right. Which angle.

was best. So there was one angle that did not work, and there was an angle that worked. Was it like, is it above? Is it below? Is it to the side? Is it a profile picture? I don't know. I mean, straight on would be a good angle for being open environment. That's right. So that's fron. So we talk about fronting. We love to see someone straight on. And also research out of the University of Brussels found that the angle of your photo affects people's perceptions of you. So for example, when we look at someone up so that we hold the camera down, they look more charismatic, the double chin angle. And if you can pull off it without the double tin, it actually works really well because we as children looked up at adults that we admired.

We like to look up at people. You'll notice a lot of celebrities in their IMDB photos. They have angle up at them because it makes them look really tall, really charismatic. Looking down, it makes you look vulnerable, makes you look a little bit weaker. It can be a submissive way of doing a photo. So those are not bad or worse, but they send off very, very different signals. When I was helping a couple of athletic female friends of mine do profile photos, we had them do the top-down angle because they were like six-foot-one. That's the perfect example because they wanted to sort of tone it down, right? They have an alphaism about them, but they don't want that to be the first and foremost thing. Right.

So yes, front-on is best, and then the angle of the camera is depending on your brand. What signals you want to set off? Next one. What was the best context? So I gave away already the bathroom, not bathroom. You know that one. Huh. I don't know.

Outdoors or something? Yes, you got it. So by far, any kind of outside context was best. There were so many bathroom photos. It was insane. Yeah, that's just weird to me. Oh, my God, insane. And we've all seen the one where there's like a turd in the background.

I knew you were going to. I knew you were going to say that. I had to. You had to. Because they were thinking it. Yeah, not that one. Right. So outdoors is really good, but without sunglasses.

This is a caveat. If you're going to be outdoors, take off your sunglasses. Just be all squinty in your towel and headphones. No, smize. Just smize. You know, like, take off your shirt. smyze, don't have sunglasses. Throw on some headphones.

Oil yourself up a little bit. That's going to be good for you. Okay. All right. Here's the big one I get. Smile or not smiling? Smiling. So actually a closed mouth smile was the worst thing you could do.

So the serial killer smile? The serial smile or like the like I'm being casual. So I'm just smiling small. The smug one? The smug one. So for men, the best picture was actually neutral face. So neutral faces actually did better for men than like full on smiling and they did way better than close.

mouth smiling. So neutral or big smile, don't go in between. Neutral or big smile? Yeah. So like, as a man. As a man. Yes, exactly. So if you're going to do it, do it. Right. Like, don't like give like the little like, I'm cool, casual smile. Like, what's up? Yeah, the guns. None of that. Right. So either like smile, go home or go bigger, go home. Thank you. Just go home. Go bigger. Go home. That's the perfect one. What about females? What about women and smiling? So neutral face was not as good for women. So for them, it's only the big smile. We as possibly society, Definitely American male perspective tends to be, and you've heard this, if a woman has a neutral face, we call it resting bitch face.

Whereas if a guy is a neutral face, there's no comment made about it whatsoever. Yes. So there's actually some science behind resting bitch face. It's oftentimes associated with women who have their facial features angled down. So if my mouth at rest goes down, so if I, yeah, the corners of my mouth are angled slightly down. Sure. Yeah. Look at you, just all resting.

Just resting. RBS. awful. So that is a partial sadness micro-expression, even though I'm at rest. My eyes, you'll notice that I actually use liner to make them go up. I did see that. Okay. So the reason I do that is because if I don't do that, I look more tired because my eyes angled down. We're right. We're, our tribes people tend to have that characteristic. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So that is why, what you're seeing is women who don't have RBS. It's because their mouth is usually set slightly up and their eyes are set up. That is what the science is behind resting bitch face. Gotcha. So for a woman,

do not go neutral. Really the big smile is better. If you're going to go neutral, make sure that you don't have downward facing features. Gotcha. All right. And you'll know that by whether or not people accuse you of having resting bitch face. You'll know. If you ever, if you ever have you know, you hear about it all the time. Oh my God. I want to punch people in the face when they tell me to smile. Oh, yeah. That's a thing that I didn't realize was not okay until maybe seven years ago. Because I was always like, oh, I'm going to be that guy who always encourages people to smile. The way to encourage people to smile is to smile first, not to tell them to smile. Thank God we said that.

Okay, so two things you should never tell. I think anyone, but especially a woman. One is to smile. Smile looks so good on you. Smile before me, baby. No. Second is you're so much more short or tall than I thought. You never want to comment on someone's height.

Like I have seen this over and over again. For a man or a woman, if you tell someone you're so much er than I thought, it really messes with people like, they're like, well, is that a bad thing? Like, is that a good thing? Like, I'm taller, I'm shorter. I have gotten both. I thought he'll say to me, you're taller than I thought. You're shorter than I thought. You're exactly the height I assumed you were. Thanks. You're welcome. Thanks, Doran. Nailed it. Nailed it. That makes a, that's a good point, right? Because we have so much self-worth and identity connected to whether or not you're a big, strong person. And that's a good thing. If you're a guy, maybe not so good if you're an athletic

female who's a little self-conscious about that sometimes. And if you're a good, and if you're a you don't want to be smaller than people thought because it makes you seem weaker. And if you're a woman, there's so many different. I've been offended by both. I have been offended when people tell me that I'm shorter than I thought. When people tell you I'm taller than I thought. I'm offended by both. That's crazy.

You really can't go right with that, right? Because if you're like, wow, you're even prettier than I thought. It's like, well, F you then. Boo, boo. I agreed. So what you're saying is I look terrible in all of my photos. That is exactly right. And I've had people actually say like, oh, like, this picture of you is like really not good.

You're so much better looking in person. I'm like, why would you say that to me? Like, that is what you're also had people say, you're so much nicer than you look. It's that RVF you got. Yeah, I'm like, is that supposed to make me feel good? So, okay, so yes, good. I get that one all the time. But it's true because I think in this format, I'm a lot harsher than I am in real life.

I don't go around in real life telling people what I tell people on the show. At least not all the time. Thanks? Yeah. Well, no, I mean, I think for me. Oh, that people think you're an offline. They assume I'm going to be harsher and less friendly in person. I get it.

But you have to be in an interview, right? Like you're trying to like get info. Well, because I'm not trying to get the, I think a lot of hosts and I won't harp on this for too long, but I think a lot of hosts are really obsessed with getting a guest to like them. And they want to be friends and they want to hang out and all this. It's a terrible idea because then they're afraid to challenge you and so you did this and it doesn't make it. Okay, I promise I won't harp on this for too long, but I've done like hundreds of podcast interviews that I'm sure you have too. And the reason why you're such a good interviewer is because you listen to what I'm saying and you don't try to validate it.

Like if you don't agree with it, you'll say that. The worst interviewers are the ones who are like, amazing. After every answer. Great advice after every answer. And then there's no feedback or pushback. I feel like sometimes I could say anything. You could. And they would be like, amazing advice Vanessa Van Edwards.

And you're like, that didn't, like, that's not even a conversation. So then it could be a blog post. That's right. There's no reason for the host to be there. Like, I don't have a podcast. I don't have like a blog. So the only time that I can actually talk to someone and think through ideas is as a guest on podcast.

And so, yes, I like that we actually. discuss things and you're hard, you're hard hitting. Good. I appreciate, I appreciate you. That sounded terrible that I stopped there. But okay, number six is, you know what I? I didn't even think about it. I paused and I was like, why did I pause there? Hopefully people are like, what? Cut the tension with a knife. A butter knife. Yeah. Yes. Okay, six, hands or no hands? In the picture? In the picture. Oh, man. Hands in the picture. Hands in the picture. Yeah. That is because they are our trust Indicators. Threat detection type stuff going on here. Yeah. And actually for women, this was more of a statistic, had more of a statistical significance than men. So we saw a lot of women who would do like the, like, I don't know how people are watching like the hand on face, hand on chin, hand like tanning the hair, right? Like that look. So I think for women, it's actually less about the trust and it's more about the sexy self-touch. So when a woman self-touches, it makes you think what would it be like to touch her. And so in a way, it foreshadows a nice level of touch. I think that that's why for women, for hot women, for women, that was seen more often than with men.

Huh. Okay. And men, hands in the picture are still something. Yeah, but not nearly statistically significant. So I wouldn't, don't bother yourself with that one, right? Like, it wasn't enough of a show. So all those high school yearbook photos where they make you do like this steepling and I'm leaning on a ladder right now because there's a ladder here.

Let's do the prom pose. Like the prom pose. Right. Like that's exactly how it is. Or like you like hold hands like awkwardly up at your chest level, which like no one ever does. Right. Oh, can we put some lasers in the background please? I need some lasers.

clouds, like some like those like when they like spatter paint on the back of the things. Yeah. Okay. Last one. Shout out to life touch photos. Okay. The mark of a hot woman. So we found that of all the hot women there was a consistent thing that we found over and over again, which it was.

I don't know. Longer hair? Nope. Actually, we saw a lot of women with shorter like chin length hair. Yeah, I like that short hair. Yeah. Not that that has any bearing on this particular discussion. I don't know.

What was the universal trait? It was the Monroe gaze. So the Monroe gaze is a universal body language trait where Mara Monroe did it. That's why it's named after her. So she tilts her head back. She like makes that kind of look. Really? That's so cheesy.

I know. So I think that this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because if a man is looking at a woman and he sees like neck where the pheromones come out, he sees the softness of her chin, which indicates high estrogen. So, you know, men are looking for high estrogen, right? So symmetrical phase. Signs of youth and fertility, yeah. Exactly. And so if you're tilting your head back and exposing the chin and neck, which can show high levels of estrogen, and then looking at someone underneath the lashes, A, it mirrors an orgasm face.

Yeah, I was going to say that than I thought better of it. Okay. I think I saw that on your face. Yeah, you saw it go from across the eyes. Yeah. And good job. Yes, you're welcome. Good job.

I had to say it. Yeah. So that is also the orgasm face, right? And so it reminds men of that. That's why it's called Monroe Gates. That's why Merrill Monroe did it. The other kind of opposite, not opposite, but the same thing we found was like, You know Lola Bunny, do you remember?

No. Do you remember? Okay, so you can Google her or whatever. So Lola Bunny would also look up through her lashes, so she would expose her neck but be looking up through her lashes. It seemed like that kind of sultry look. We have the look up real extreme or the look down with the neck exposed was the mark of a hot one. It's like the Paris Hilton getting just got out of jail walk.

That's right. That's right. And so I don't like to advise that to women because I think unless you pull that, and you can really pull it off, it looks inauthentic. It's also just such a cheesy, like, really... You know, I don't think you'd think so if you saw it. I'd probably... You say that now because I'm terrible at it.

Maybe that's why. Maybe just a failure of example here. No, I'm terrible at it, especially like in a podcast environment where I'm like, you know, it's like, when I flashed my neck and you're doing that... Adam's apple. Look at that. Cram it out there. So, like, yeah, I'm doing a bad example of it. But in these pictures, if I showed you the pictures of these women, you'd be like, oh.

Dang. I get it. I say that with caution. I believe you. Yeah. believe the data. The data speaks for itself, but proceed with caution only do it if like that feels natural to you. You got a book coming out. Tell us about that. Yeah, Captivate. It is my personal handbook on the science of succeeding with people. And it's coming out. April 25th.

And it's all of my favorite human behavior hacks. So there's 14 of them. They're all based in science. And we share a bunch of my original research in there as well. So I'm very excited for it to come out. I hope people like it. Including your husband's food habits. I'm sure those are in there. You know what? I don't think that one's in there, but I'll have some other pretty embarrassing It's a thing story. It's in the secret. Yeah, I captivate two. Right.

Good. All right, and that'll be linked up in the show notes. Yes, please. Next time, I'm going to get you a pituitary gland necklace. Yeah, it's just going to be like a golden ball. A giant one, just one ball. And then we'll see they're going to be like, oh, I guess I know a lot about him. He's got a cat testicle on his necklace.

And it's going to have baines and everything. Thank you very much, miss. Thank you. Now, I've got some thoughts in this episode, but before we get into that, here's what you should check out next on the Jordan Harbinger show. Chase Manhattan Bank robbery. I'm the second-negotiated on the phone. Hugh McGowan is a commander of the NYPD team.

He puts me on the phone, he takes this guy off. He says, you're up, you're next. This is what I want you to do. You're just going to take over the phone and say, you're talking to me now. And we're going to do it really abruptly. My point is to get a hostage out, which is what a hostage negotiator is supposed to do. And somebody hands me a note and says, ask him if he wants to come out. That was somebody that was listening.

My friend, Jamie, Jamie Sedanio. Jamie is sitting there and something in Jamie. his instincts is telling him that this guy wants to come out more than anything else. He just hears it. And he writes, ask him if he wants to come out. I see a note popping in front of my face. So I go, do you want to come out? And there's a long silence on the other end of the line.

And the guy says, I don't know how I do that. Which is a great big giant, yes. Yeah. Everybody goes like, holy cow, Kate. Get him out of there. I'm talking, I'm talking. I'm talking. And again, probably about, I don't know, maybe half an hour later.

Another note comes in my hand. I don't know where it's from. As it turns out, it's from Jamie again. And the note says, tell him you meet him outside. And I say, tell him. How about this? I'm not if I meet you out front of the bank. And he goes, yeah, I'm ready to do this shit.

I get out there, I get on the PA, I start talking to him. So I say, hi, it's Chris, I'm out here. Standard operating procedure is to barricade the exit from the outside. So a bad guy suddenly doesn't run away. So SWAT has barricaded the bank from the outside, which everyone has forgotten. So I'm trying to talk this guy out the door. We don't know how many bad guys are inside. We don't know how they're going to react.

We don't know they're going to start shooting. We don't know what the hell's going to happen. He comes to the door and can't get out. Oh, God. That would be a rat. That was he rattles the door. He was like, ah. He's nervous, right?

I mean, no crap. I'm trapped in here now. Yeah, on the opposite, we go, nah, what do we do? We forgot to unlock the door. And our bad guy is kind of like, oh, you want to play games with me, huh? For more from FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss,

including negotiation and persuasion tips, along with a few crazy stories, check out episode 165 of the Jordan Harbinger show. Big thank you to Vanessa. Savan Edwards. Links to all things, Vanessa, including all her books and courses, will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Please use our website links if you buy books from any guest on the show. It helps support this show. Transcripts are in the show notes, videos are on YouTube, advertisers, deals, and discount codes all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider

supporting those who support this show. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems, software, tiny habits, the same stuff I do every single day. That's our six-minute networking course. That course is free, always will be. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig that well before you get thirsty, folks. Build those relationships before you need them. Most of the guests you hear on the show actually subscribe and contribute to that same course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company. This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty,

Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody is really into body language and all this nonverbal communication stuff that enthralled me for so many years, definitely share this episode with them.

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