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Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

bbc.com

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Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#71

Post by branchless »

jimhefferon wrote: post #68
branchless wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Europeans regard Americans as insincere in social interactions. I suspect many of these "tips" would fall very flat outside the USA. Americans always want to be your best friend, then it becomes clear at the end of the conversation that it meant nothing to them. Kind of a shame as it masks genuine kindness.

I agree that there is something like an Overton window in social interactions and that it is centered at different points of the continuum in different cultures. Still, for some people at least (me!) thinking about where I sit in that window in my culture is interesting and I hope helpful.

Agreed but there is no shortcut around a culture fixated on personal gain for personal profit. This seems to be built into the framework of the USA instead of being an optional dependency! With outcomes like high inequality, huge divisions, fake politicians etc.

The driving ideology is in direct opposition to genuine, casual, unmotivated concern/interest.

Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#73

Post by nhhilltopper »

hoodwink wrote: post #2

Any good book recommendations on engaging small talk and authentic first impressions? I’m headed to a weeklong NYE retreat that has a tendency to dredge up high school cafeteria level social anxieties.

Not a book, but a great starter question is "So what's on your (movie/book/travel/restaurant/etc.) bucket list this year?"

Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#74

Post by sharkjacobs »

sidcool wrote: post #49

A harsh fact is not mentioned. Good looking people have it easier than others. There's a natural charm in for looks.

The importance of "morphological features" are mentioned, but the article's focus is on things that people have more control over.

Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#75

Post by blattimwind »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #7
qubyte wrote: post #4

The article mentions getting someone to like you unnaturally fast to divulge information. This happened to me once. I was a character reference for a friend who needed security clearance for a position in the UK, and they sent a a guy to come and interview me. About 45 minutes later I came out of the room and quickly realised I'd been mined for information (all good, luckily for my friend). While it was happening it…

You can see that principle at work in the interrogation of Reality Winner. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015e-c5e7-ddab-a57f-cfe7d...

Am I the only one who can never read her name without immediately thinking it's the code name of a SGI graphics pipeline?

Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#76

Post by bkanber »

sidcool wrote: post #49

A harsh fact is not mentioned. Good looking people have it easier than others. There's a natural charm in for looks.

> “While some things, like dominance, are highly related to morphological features, there are things like trustworthiness and even attractiveness which are highly dependent on facial expressions,” says Todorov

> Of course, while you may not be able to control the physical features of your face, it is possible to alter your expressions and smile.

I'd say that is mentioned.

Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#77

Post by dswalter »

chickenfries wrote: post #35
trentmb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally off topic- why is it people always use "voracious" to describe their reading habits?

It's funny how some adjectives always seem to be followed by certain nouns, huh? I think about this whenever I heard about "bodies strewn on the street" on the news. Reading (and watching) seems to be compared to eating all the time: - I devoured that book - I binged that season Then there's that term, "consumption" which seemingly applies to every piece of media.

You're looking for the linguistic term 'collocation,' and these are good examples of idiomatic usage of English. Further, words located in proximity with each other is a big part of the distributional hypothesis: "you shall know a word by the company it keeps". This is in turn a key component of how language models like word2vec or GloVe can be effective.

Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#78

Post by kakarot »

afarrell wrote: post #58
zschuessler wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fine line, isn't it? Ha! You're correct of course. To anyone with fear of being creepy: my good friend shared a video with me recently on vulnerability. It forced me to rewire my brain: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability One item I'd add to the article on being charming: be vulnerable . Vulnerability is relatable, it's genuine.

You also have to accept the possibility of being creepy. People have varied and different responses to things and there is no way to 100% eliminate the possibility that any given person sees you as a threat to their safety. All you can do is take reasonable precautions so that a reasonable person would not be creeped out. Keep in mind that "reasonable" is culturally-dependent, so you should pay attention to the local…

Someone once told me that the way they can always tell if someone is an American traveling abroad in their country is that they always have this stupid shit eating grin on their face and most everyone else keeps a neutral expression.

If you are out of your cultural element, you can cross the line into apparent insincerity with surprising ease. Always know thyself.

Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#79

Post by kakarot »

StavrosK wrote: post #17
hoodwink wrote: post #2

Any good book recommendations on engaging small talk and authentic first impressions? I’m headed to a weeklong NYE retreat that has a tendency to dredge up high school cafeteria level social anxieties.

Not a book, but I've found that asking people what they do and being genuinely interested in it (especially if it's a job you know nothing about) is a treasure trove of interesting information. For example, if you meet a plumber, you can get hours of conversation out of just talking about the various aspects of the jobs. Although I guess it helps that I like learning about other jobs, too, and I tend to ask people to…

Definitely. I love talking to people about their work, whatever it is.

It's an easy way to get someone to open up to you and you're bound to learn a few things if you're willing to display your lack of knowledge in their domain.

If you approach the conversation with candor, it rarely seems trite

Re: Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

#80

Post by devdad »

Many seem to claim that using these methods are manipulative. One could also argue that knowing these methods put those that lack inherited social skills, or find it scary to interact with others, on equal footing with those that use these techniques naturally. Look to someone you think is killing it in all social circumstances without effort. These people will smile (with both the eyes and mouth), show interest in others and mirror the physical behavior of their talking partner. Most of these people aren't trying to manipulate. It comes naturally. You could improve yourself to just become a natural by realizing these signs.
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