Social Proof – AFC AdamLondon
Social proof is essentially a means to generate Pre-selection, and Propinquity.
Pre-selection was a form of attraction that I feel was adequately outlined in a psychological test covered last year by Benedict Jones. The theory behind Pre-selection has been around since the mid 1900′s and argueably before, however I feel this test sums it up more than well enough for our purposes.
The Test
Benedict Jones Test 05.02.06 participants first viewed eight pairs of male faces and indicated which face in each pair they preferred and how strongly they preferred it. Following this, participants viewed a slideshow where they saw the same pairs of male faces, but in which a woman was shown looking at one of the men in each pair with either a happy expression ( i.e. smiling) or a relatively negative (i.e. neutral) expression. After the slide show, participants repeated the initial face preference test.
Results
For female participants, a paired samples t-test comparing the change in mean strength of preference for target faces in the happy and neutral conditions showed that the increase in preference for faces that were smiled at by women during the observation phase was greater than that for faces that were looked at by women with neutral expressions.
So we can see from the test that women generally prefere men that other women are already attracted to. As certain emotions can be ambiguous to see from a distance or without understanding the context; a harmless smile will often be perceived by others as a signature of attraction.
Therefore the more people you speak to in a room and leave feeling good about themselves with regards to you the more pre-selection you will generate. This could be done by anything from going around taking pictures of people, to getting everyone to dance, to buying everyone a drink, to just saying hi to everyone you meet.
However Social Proof is even more powerful as it also generates Propinquity, and this is a form of comfort.
Preselection = Attraction
Propinquity = Comfort
Attraction + Comfort = Lay
(Awesome formula eh? Who Said I was bad at maths.)
Propinquity is the term used to describe a physical proximity, special bond, or some form of kinship between things. Psychology views this is one of the leading triggers in interpersonal or social attraction. It roughly relates to being close to someone else in some form or another. This could be in physical terms, i.e you live in the same area as someone or not so physical, you both belong to the same association. The closer the proximity the higher the propinquity. For example those living on the same floor in a building have a higher propinquity than those on different floors.
In this Diagram we can see that A and B would both be attracted to C as C lies within both of A and B’s Circle. Likewise C would be attracted to both A and B and would have the option of choosing either. D is the outsider of the group, and therefore holds the lowest levels of attraction to any of the other parties.
The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they encounter often. In other words, relationships tend to be formed between those who have a high propinquity. It was first theorized by psychologists Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, Kurt Lewin and Kurt Bach in what came to be called as the Westgate studies conducted MIT university in 1950
Propinquity can be more than just physical distance. For example, residents of an apartment building living near a stairway tend to have more friends from other floors than others. Propinquity also applies to Social groups. These could consist of class mates, friendship social circles or even work colleagues, and explains the tendency for teachers to date teachers, members of the police force to date each other and so on.
In 1956 Alan C Kerckhoff conducted a study on residential propinquity, around 70% of the married couples lived within 20 blocks of their partner before marriage. This seems obvious when you think about it. Yet it is something people don’t really think about.
It seems strange to say that just being close to somebody generates attraction, yet if you notice the amount of IOI’s you get if you see a girl every morning on the same train, or from someone who lives in the apartment block opposite you. You will almost always begin to say hello every day. Obviously this isn’t the be all and end all, however it is the start. Social proof enables us to generate this regularly creating this initial spark whenever we vybe with a room showing that the room is our social circle and that they are part of it.
It is powerful because it is a passive form of game, When run correctly it enables you to get opened. My wing and best friend Jim Stark used this to close his incredibly hot current girlfriend who is a slim blonde model type and at least 6 inches taller than Jim. She actually asked him on the night.
“Who are you? Why does everyone seem to know you?”
The fact that it requires little outer game and instead primarily relies on having fun and possesing a sold Inner game frame to work from, makes it something that people can get to grips with easily without jeapodising their own personality.
It has been the basis of my game since I started in the game and is in my mind the reason I have done as well as I have so quickly. Though I am always looking to make myself better. I have seen past tutors and wings of mine stare at me as with only social proof and a few simple afc lines I have managed to close girls that blew them out previously. Then watched them completely alter their game to focus on Social Proof to amazing effect.
You want the magic pill? It doesn’t exist. Social Proof is the next best thing.
AFC AdamLondon
Hey, Adam,
Before I comment on this post I just want to say I just started reading/watching your stuff I think it is really great. As much as the techniques you teach, I think the fact that you seem to be having a great time trying out all sorts of stuff on women is really infectious (to the women too) and it really removes the creepiness factor which I see in a lot of the techniques out there. You don’t apply any weird pressure to the girls, it just seems as if you create an atmosphere where getting closer is something that will happen on its own.
Anyway, about this post. I wanted to say that I tend not to try out everything I read right away, I sort of mull over the philosophical and moral issues first: is what you are doing fair to the girl and, just as important, is it fair to you?
In their book “Age of Propaganda,” a couple of California sociologists collected the most effective persuasion techniques they could find, concentrating not on results of sociology studies, but on people who persuade for a living. Their conclusion:
People take mental short cuts.
Which is exactly what social proof is. Instead of talking to you and making their own decision, girls give you an attraction head start because other girls like you.
A social proof demonstration happened to me years ago, although I had no name for it at the time. I approached a table of three girls and tried to talk to them and they basically blew me off. A few minutes later my ex boss, a gorgeous girl who had just fired me walked in. I was standing at the bar and she came over crying, and started hugging me and apologizing, saying how bad she felt.
The minute she left, the three girls came over, said they were leaving, and invited me over to their house. Later that night, they pointed out whose bedroom was whose, and said I could sleep wherever I wanted.
So here’s my problem. This pretty much pissed me off.
I was no different from the guy they had blown off except that my boss came in drunk and cried over me, and now they all want to sleep with me? That just felt like a really shallow move on their parts. It was like they didn’t like me for me at all, but just because the attention of another girl somehow legitimized me.
See, I am not saying this is a bad technique, I am sure it works, I am just saying: Do you really want to spend time with someone who care so much about what other random women think?
All Best,
Brother Bertrille
Bertrille,
I don’t think it has much to do with those girl’s characters. I think the urge to judge others according to their social standing already is a natural process, and in fact an advantageous one. Evolutionarily speaking, it is safer for us to judge people we don’t know according to how we perceive others perceive them, because chances are they are right. There may not be any guarantee, but to take an extreme example, if there was a man whom everyone treated as if they knew he was a serial killer, then the women who take in that fact and pre-judge that man based on his social standing are making the safest move… it would be best not to risk that what others perceive him could be wrong, because if they are right then they could be killed before they get the chance to know the guy and decide for themselves.
Its an extreme example, but it shows how using such mental shortcuts is a natural, advantageous process, even if it can lead to prejudging people badly.
We can’t afford the time to get to know everyone we meet on a deep, intimate level, so what we as human beings do is take in a pool of what everyone knows about a certain someone, and judge from that collective information.
And anyway, you really can’t judge people for what turns them on. What makes us attracted to people is a vastly complex process all based on what helped us evolve and pass on our jeans. I’m not gonna hold it against a guy if he doesn’t want to sleep with someone cause they don’t fill the criteria that his instincts came up with… large breasts, thin body, blonde maybe; and I’m not gonna hold it against any girls because they find themselves attracted to someone because of a mainly subconscious process.
So in conclusion, I think its perfectly morally sound to be doing this, as much as any attempt to improve one’s attraction to the opposite (or same) sex. If someone dresses up before they go on a night out in the town, are they unfairly manipulating girls attractions to them? No, they simply know it might improve their chances.
Gabriel
AFC Adam is once again on the money with this theory. He talks about meta gaming on you tube which is also worth a look guys!
Social Proof can be boiled down to the topic of FIRST IMPRESSIONS. Everyone knows how important they are, right?
Think of two hypothetical guys, one you see on a saturday night, really drunk,grabbing girls arms aggressively and saying some stupid ass line
OR
A guy who is stylish and popular,talking to everyone who walks past him, and has people fighting for his attention
Obviously the second guy will make a better first impression. Did you know that a first impression is made in the first three seconds of viewing someone?? So with out even opening your mouth, a girl has made an impression of you in the first three seconds!!
Would you want this first impression to be the drunk guy, or the second guy who is a fun sociable guy? easy choice eh? So using social proof, we make people have a great first impression of us and helps us in our PU and also to have a fun filled night meeting loads of new people!
That being said, first impressions aren’t everything and they can be over turned. However if your not creating a great first impression you will have to battle uphill to game a girl because of it. Its acheivable,but why create the extra work. It doesnt make sense
Create a great first impresion! social proof makes “gaming” more easy, so why not take advantage of it and enjoy yourself?
Adams ranked number 3 PUA in the world. Social proof works!
Noel
Gabriel
Thanks for responding to my post. You have made me think a little more deeply about social proof and helped me clarify just what my problem with it is. If I were to sum up what bothers me in a few words, I would say the problem is:
Social Proof vs. Intuition
I don’t think there is anything wrong with the way Adam uses social proof. He is going around the room genuinely connecting with all sorts of people, and that is raising his value to them in a legitimate, if superficial way, as far as the women who haven’t talked to him yet are concerned.
What he is doing isn’t manipulating them, he is only using a technique to remove artificial barriers. He still has to talk to them and win them over with his personality. If he doesn’t have the personality to back up the social proof, he is out of luck. That is fine.
That is what pick up techniques are at their best, strategies that give you at least a chance with a girl who might not talk to you otherwise.
But as Adam himself says, social proof is a powerful technique and that is why he has based his own style on it.
I just think that anything powerful can be abused.
It would be different if he were using social proof cynically to manipulate, if he weren’t genuinely enjoying talking to everyone but just pretending to in order to make an impression on some girl he hadn’t talked to who he had set his sights on. Then the technique creeps over into manipulation which is, well, creepy.
The fact is that a powerful technique like social proof when used to manipulate can not only persuade, but over ride a person’s natural intuitions or gut instincts, and that can lead to trouble for them.
I think Gambler somewhere mentions the book “Influence” by Robert Cialdini. What concerned Cialdini was those moments when you felt yourself being persuaded almost like an automaton, sometimes even against your will.
He called them the “click-whirr” moments when despite your best intentions and all your opinions to the contrary, you found yourself doing what someone else wanted you to do instead of doing what you wanted to do. Click-whirr, you weren’t a person anymore, but a compliance machine.
His book wasn’t just about influencing others, but about keeping yourself from being influenced into doing things you didn’t want to do. We don’t want to be subtly coercing women, only giving ourselves a chance with them.
The reason I was annoyed with the girls I described in my post was because they were acting like little sheep. First they had no interest in me. Then another woman shows interest in me, click-whirr, they are interested in me; they get me to their house, I am the only man, so they start competing with each other, more social proof, and it doesn’t matter who I am or what I am like, they are all interested.
And I certainly can judge someone for what they are attracted to. I like a woman who goes with her gut, likes what she likes, and isn’t swayed so much by what everyone else thinks. All of us make these judgments all the time. It isn’t enough how someone looks, she also has to be the kind of girl that we want to spend time with.
And I am not just discussing situations where women are easily swayed by the pressure of social proof. I am also thinking about us. There have been times in my life where a girl and I have been interacting in a way that seemed like we were headed for the bedroom. On paper, she was everything I looked for: Pretty, smart, funny, all the things that my friends and I say we want.
And yet, something wasn’t right. I just didn’t feel the sort of connection I should have. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But guess what. That’s right, click-whirr, I slept with her, and it turned out to be fairly unpleasant for one reason or another.
It was as if the psychological pressure of social proof was so strong that it overpowered my own gut reactions. And that is not a good thing.
So that is what I am really trying to get at here. I don’t want to have a woman only spending time with me because of some cooked up sociological situation, and I certainly don’t want to end up pressured again into something because there are social forces at work that I don’t really understand.
Social proof is powerful, and if expertly applied can override intuition and common sense. This is something we don’t want to happen to us or anyone else.
In fact, the example of serial killers that you brought up describes just what I am saying.
I understand what you are getting at: If someone is seen as creepy by a lot of people, chances are, they are creepy and it is good to pay attention to that kind of red flag.
However. . .I am not certain how much that example applies to actual serial killers. Very often serial killers are expert manipulators who will lure unsuspecting women by taking advantage of all the mental short cuts they make.
Take Ted Bundy, absolutely normal looking, somewhat handsome, a social chameleon, who would approach women wearing a smile and a phony cast on his right arm asking her for help, and then hit her on the head with the cast and stuff her in his car.
The social proof is: no one says no to an injured non threatening person asking for help.
Note: And this is interesting too: Social proof works even if other people aren’t there with you. All that matters is what you think others would do. Social proof is all in your head.
(In fact there is a fascinating book about the criminologist Lonnie Athens in which author describes Athens’ theory about how we all carry around a “phantom peer group” in our heads which we consult with before we act. We decide our actions as influenced as much by our phantom peers as we do by actual people who are present with us.)
Another example is the serial killer Edward Kemper, who lured hitchhiking girls into his car even though he actually did look like a serial killer. His method? Pull over, ask where ask a girl was going, look at his watch and hesitate as if he had some place to be, and was trying to decide whether to pick her up or not. This gesture was what convinced the girls it was okay to get in his car.
Social proof: A guy who seems to have more important things to do than pick you up (even a six foot seven three hundred pound scary one) is safe to get in a car with because he has other things to do with other people, which he wouldn’t have if he was a killer.
So here are a couple examples of social proof where the social pressure is so strong that it actually overrides a woman’s natural wariness around strange men.
Anyway, you get the point. I am not saying that social proof is bad under all circumstances. But I don’t agree with you that it is naturally advantageous all the time. In fact, the reason I am so interested in it as a subject is that it is such a powerful social influence, and that it is used to manipulate us all the time, particularly by advertisers, and we have to be careful if and how we use it.
If we use it like Adam does, in a way that naturally arises out of his interest in meeting and talking to people in such a way that it lowers unnatural barriers enough to give us a chance to meet girls, I am all for it.
If, however, we use it cynically, to overpower other people’s intuiton or reasonable caution, then it is not such a good idea.
Again, thanks for responding to what I posted. It helped me clarify my thinking.
Brother Bertrille.
This applies to anything in game though doesn’t it- anytime you apply something new it can feel manipulative, and chances are you’ll get blown out because of it. Its only once you start to learn the benefits of that technique, other than simply getting laid, that it will start to really work. For example, if you go to a bar and your busting for some action sobyou think ‘I’ll talk to everyone here and they’ll all love me then I can shag that red-head” well, no-one there is going to want to talk to you- we’re far more intuitive than that. But if you find that as you become more confident you find spontanteous reasons to speak to other people in a bar, and you connect off those spontaneous reasons, then this will raise your profile, confidence and social proof a mile. Plus its fun, and there’s no manipulative undertones.
does this ring true with you guys? its just how it seems to work for me anyway..
Hey Adam,
You’ve talked about using daygame to increase your evening social proof, so I have two questions:
1. How do you deal with inviting multiple girls from daygame to something- does it matter that they don’t know each other, and of course wont it make it difficult for you to sleep with any/all of them, once they see you playing with other girls…
2. More importantly, how do you convert day closes into real dates?- thus far I’ve been less successful than in clubs, because busy day time closes are much shorter- so they’re great in the moment but don’t go anywhere..
Open to any ones advice on this.
Muchos Buenos
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