11 ms·

Thanks for the summary. I haven't read the book yet, but I'll have to sometime. It's interesting that on one side you have Carnegie's "make them feel important

Thanks for the summary. I haven't read the book yet, but I'll have to sometime. It's interesting that on one side you have Carnegie's "make them feel important to make them interested in you" and on the other side you have the pick-up artists' (I'm not defending them) "neg them to make them interested in you". In one variant you lift the other person up and in the other you push them down, both with the idea of wanting them to talk to you more. I've heard that men that tease each other (in one sense making them feel less important) in groups do it as a bonding experience, because the fact that you can tease the other person without them punching you is a sign that you're members of the same group. On the other hand, gently teasing someone in a group can make them feel more important as well, since you're suggesting that they're important enough to deserve being teased. With Carnegie on one side and the pick-up artists on the other, I'll obviously side with Carnegie's more positive view of human interactions. It also fits well with a tenet in improvisational theater that you should always make the other actor look good. You both benefit from that, especially if they do the same to you. If you make them look good, the audience thinks you're both good, and the other actor will want to play more scenes with you. It seems like an obvious suggestion, but what it does is it shifts your focus from what you can do to look good yourself to what you can do to make the other person look good, which is often a lot easier anyway. It takes you out of your own head and makes you more attentive and focused on the other person, so that you can respond to and amplify the good thing they do.

cookiecaper 9y ago
>Thanks for the summary. I haven't read the book yet, but I'll have to sometime. You should. It's a short book (a few hours to read), and then you can tell everyone you've read it, since it's one of the first things that gets asked when leadership skills are in play (most people don't seem to fixate on the importance aspect like I did, though). IMO researching psychology will pay more direct dividends than researching any other field. A lot of the stuff you run across is intuitively true and you can immediately recognize it throughout your life. Doing the research gives you a vocabulary to describe it and heightens your awareness significantly, enabling you to better utilize the social skills that we all have hiding under the covers somewhere. :) It is important to carefully select your material, though, because there is a lot of nonsense pop psychology out there. I would avoid the more general, mass-appeal stuff and stick to the classics starting out. >It's interesting that on one side you have Carnegie's "make them feel important to make them interested in you" and on the other side you have the pick-up artists' (I'm not defending them) "neg them to make them interested in you". In one variant you lift the other person up and in the other you push them down, both with the idea of wanting them to talk to you more. Well, there is some nuance here. Pick up artists suggest starving the mark of attention because that sends a signal that you are important, which sets them up to believe that they're important too when you do finally impart attention. On the other hand, giving too much attention to a person sends the signal that you're too available, that you don't have anything else going on. That creates the impression that if no one else is interested in your time, it may not be valuable. Since important people don't hang out with unimportant people, this causes the potential partner to worry about their association with you, and how it may affect their importance, both in the absolute/real sense and in the perception of others. I haven't gone deep into the pick up artist scene, so I'm not really familiar with the intricacies of "negging". I'm sure that a lot of parts of it are way overboard. But they are correct that in seduction, few things are quite so fatal as the whiff of desperation. It devalues everyone involved. >what it does is it shifts your focus from what you can do to look good yourself to what you can do to make the other person look good, which is often a lot easier anyway. It takes you out of your own head and makes you more attentive and focused on the other person, so that you can respond to and amplify the good thing they do. Also yes, I think this is one of the keys too. The better you can approximate and relate to the POV of the other individual, the better you're going to do. Structures and activities that close this gap are crucially important to happy relationships.

cookiecaper 9y ago

>Thanks for the summary. I haven't read the book yet, but I'll have to sometime. You should. It's a short book (a few hours to read), and then you can tell everyone you've read it, since it's one of the first things that gets asked when leadership skills are in play (most people don't seem to fixate on the importance aspect like I did, though). IMO researching psychology will pay more direct dividends than researching any other field. A lot of the stuff you run across is intuitively true and you can immediately recognize it throughout your life. Doing the research gives you a vocabulary to describe it and heightens your awareness significantly, enabling you to better utilize the social skills that we all have hiding under the covers somewhere. :) It is important to carefully select your material, though, because there is a lot of nonsense pop psychology out there. I would avoid the more general, mass-appeal stuff and stick to the classics starting out. >It's interesting that on one side you have Carnegie's "make them feel important to make them interested in you" and on the other side you have the pick-up artists' (I'm not defending them) "neg them to make them interested in you". In one variant you lift the other person up and in the other you push them down, both with the idea of wanting them to talk to you more. Well, there is some nuance here. Pick up artists suggest starving the mark of attention because that sends a signal that you are important, which sets them up to believe that they're important too when you do finally impart attention. On the other hand, giving too much attention to a person sends the signal that you're too available, that you don't have anything else going on. That creates the impression that if no one else is interested in your time, it may not be valuable. Since important people don't hang out with unimportant people, this causes the potential partner to worry about their association with you, and how it may affect their importance, both in the absolute/real sense and in the perception of others. I haven't gone deep into the pick up artist scene, so I'm not really familiar with the intricacies of "negging". I'm sure that a lot of parts of it are way overboard. But they are correct that in seduction, few things are quite so fatal as the whiff of desperation. It devalues everyone involved. >what it does is it shifts your focus from what you can do to look good yourself to what you can do to make the other person look good, which is often a lot easier anyway. It takes you out of your own head and makes you more attentive and focused on the other person, so that you can respond to and amplify the good thing they do. Also yes, I think this is one of the keys too. The better you can approximate and relate to the POV of the other individual, the better you're going to do. Structures and activities that close this gap are crucially important to happy relationships.