5 Psychological Life Hacks That Will Change Your Social Life
I love life hacks…who doesn’t?! They make our lives so much easier and simpler.
From using vinegar to ward-of mosquito’s to separating your Bananas from the stem so that they don’t ripen quickly, life hacks sure do come in handy.
Our social lives need a boost too. Managing a social life can be tricky. People are complicated creatures. Hopefully these Psychological life hack will help you navigate any social scene.
Make people like you by asking for a small favour
The Benjamin Franklin Effect; it’s a neat psychological life hack. The psychological effect is attributed to an observation of Benjamin Franklin, who noticed that when you do someone a favour, you will eventually like them more than you did before. Responsible for this is the emergence of a cognitive dissonance and your brain’s response to it. A cognitive dissonance emerges whenever our behaviour does not coincide with our beliefs. If you do someone a favour that you do not particularly like, your brain will try to rationalise your behaviour by adapting your beliefs to the situation. It will tell you, “This person isn’t so bad after all” and give you various other opportunities to find explanations that will reduce the cognitive dissonance.
Pay attention to people’s feet, while approaching them.
When approaching a group of individuals who are already in a conversation, pay particular attention to their feet.
If they turn their torso toward you but keep their feet at their same place, you are probably interrupting them.
If they turn both their body and feet towards you, you are good to be there.
Adrenaline dates
There‘s an interesting psychological phenomenon, called “Misattribution of arousal.” It describes the human tendency to make mistakes in assuming what is causing their arousal when confronted with fear. Scientists discovered this tendency when they sent male volunteers to be interviewed by a woman on a swaying footbridge high above a canyon. A control group was interviewed by the same person on a stable bridge. The female interviewer provided her number so that the volunteers could get the results of the experiment. Interestingly enough, those men who stood on the swaying footbridge were a lot more likely to call her than the control group. The scientists concluded that the men on the swaying bridge misattributed the arousal caused by the fear provoking bridge as an interest in the woman.
If you’re going on a date, make sure that it involves some adrenaline. You don’t necessarily have to go for a roller-coaster ride, but a horror film, rock climbing, paintball or rafting will do just fine. Every activity that involves adrenaline will psychologically trick your date into thinking that their arousal can be attributed to you.
Use the power of silence
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where someone asked you about something you’d rather not like to tell? It’s pretty safe to assume that we’ve all been in situations like this countless times. However, in some situations, some people inexplicably seemed to be able to reveal a lot more than we would have liked to reveal.
One psychological hack to accomplish this is to simply make use of the power of silence. If you’re not satisfied with an answer somebody gave you, remain silent and keep looking at them. Usually, the combination of awkward silence and firm eye contact will pressure your counterpart to bridge the silence by revealing more.
More questions make you more likeable.
Charisma isn’t a mysterious gift. All you need to do to be more charming is ask more questions. That’s according to a psychological researcher on Reddit who advises job candidates to “get [the interviewer] to talk about themselves…. Ask your interviewer as many questions about what they do for work and really listen. They will walk away from the interview in a good mood because they got to talk about themselves, and they will then think that the interview went well.”
Same works in a social setting. People like talking about themselves. Show genuine interest by asking questions and really listening to their response. Try not to come of as an interrogator, rather, ask heart-warming follow-up questions starting first with a statement of how you relate to what they just said. For instance “I love that book too. Have you read anything else from this author ?”