11–20 of 77 posts
Is this for real? Is there any science to support the anecdotal experience of "the hot girl effect"?
In my experience from a particular music scene, people with celebrity-level status who want to be treated like real people tend to be the people well worth talking to. Those who want to be treated like celebrities are generally less worthwhile to talk to. Basically, you may not want to talk to anyone who's so shallow that fame is a really big deal to them.
I'm going to go ahead and say that "the hot girl effect" is not true, at least for women. The hotter you are the more you'll get hit on, guaranteed. Which leaves the theory behind this interaction up for grabs :)
I think it depends. I've dated girls that I think would be considered 'hot' and have talked to them about this exact subject. Many were not hit on very often or they were only hit on by the kind of guys that they would never date. The I'm god's gift sort of guy (think Jersey Shore TV show ugh).
And no, having some drunk guy yell across the bar he wants to marry them is not getting hit on. Hit on would be a guy coming up and trying to have a real conversation.
From a guys standpoint rejection is hard no matter how confident a guy might be. Even if a guy wants to hit on the hottest girl he finds, he may opt for one less externally hot in order to lessen the chance of rejection. Said guy may not even realize he's making this selection.
The theory above is short term (get a date), when there is also the long term consideration (marry her, have kids). If you are an average joe, the chances of you having kids with a hot top model are, very frankly, very low. And we guys know that. In the same way, the chance of us having a nice chat with the CEO of Goldman is fair, but the chance of him maintaining contact with us and being a friend or mentor is prett…
I'm going to go ahead and say that "the hot girl effect" is not true, at least for women. The hotter you are the more you'll get hit on, guaranteed. Which leaves the theory behind this interaction up for grabs :)
The theory above is short term (get a date), when there is also the long term consideration (marry her, have kids). If you are an average joe, the chances of you having kids with a hot top model are, very frankly, very low. And we guys know that. In the same way, the chance of us having a nice chat with the CEO of Goldman is fair, but the chance of him maintaining contact with us and being a friend or mentor is prett…
If the article is true, the people like you are upping the chances of people who heed its advice. So, thanks?
Is this for real? Is there any science to support the anecdotal experience of "the hot girl effect"?
OKCupid does interesting analyses of their user data. Here's a post looking at the impact of attractiveness on messaging rates ( http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati... ). Looks like, at least for their users, the "hot girl effect" is not real; the more attractive the girl, the lower the probability of a successful response.
While the graph does generally bare you out, one can see a few small turns on the OKcupid graph that might be a ghost of the "hot girl effect" - the most attractive female senders get more responses from guy of average appearance than from guys considered least the attractive...
You could also argue that when someone's already on OkCupid, they're already motivated to seek out someone and don't necessarily feel intimidated concerning who. This might be different than real life. But it might not be...
The theory above is short term (get a date), when there is also the long term consideration (marry her, have kids). If you are an average joe, the chances of you having kids with a hot top model are, very frankly, very low. And we guys know that. In the same way, the chance of us having a nice chat with the CEO of Goldman is fair, but the chance of him maintaining contact with us and being a friend or mentor is prett…
Cost: Awkwardness, potential for embarrassing rejection.
Benefit: Possible relationship, either short-term or long-term, with the subject of your admiration.
So in my mind, if you can get over the fear of rejection, there's no reason not to at least try. Coffee with a CEO is better than nothing, and may potentially be useful down the road. (Can I have a job? Remember when we had coffee that one time?) Likewise, a date with a beautiful model, even one, is better than eating ramen alone. Well, usually. :)
Also, while I agree with what you said about having "true value to offer", there are many types of value. When developing a relationship with someone like a CEO, you may not be able to offer them direct monetary value, but you might be able to give technical insight, an outsider's point of view or a perspective from a different industry, or even just a like-minded person to talk about basketball with.
My advice is to look hard for the value you can offer. Knowledge that you may take for granted is often quite valuable to others, or at least interesting enough for them to keep you around and ask your opinion.
Nope! This is non-evidence. Successful people who are arrogant and antisocial are by nature less likely to run into you, so you should expect your observed pool of people-you-know to be heavily skewed towards the friendliest people.
A similar phenomenon occurs in social network rankings: For any given person with a reasonable number of Facebook friends, their friends will be, on average, more popular than the original person (popularity defined by number of friends). Almost everyone is one of the least popular people in their own social network.
When a girl starts to become a hot babe then tons of guys hit on her -- its annoying and time consuming to ward off losers so she develops a "bitch shield". This defense mechanism tells guys that she is too good for them and not to bother, from this point on only the cocky guys approach who are not intimidated by the "bitch shield" (these guys look like assholes to "nice guys") - then the "nice guys" whine about how they can't get any girls. As lowlife as the PUA guides are, I still found them informative.