There was a lot of “men, you should approach women more” in this one, so I’m gonna rant about it a bit.
I propose a useful rule: if you advise single men to approach women more, you must give a numerical estimate of the rate at which women will accept such an advance. 80%? 20%? 5%? 1%? Put a FUCKING number on it. You can give the number as a function of (other stuff) if you want, or make it conditional on (other stuff), but give some kind of actual number.
You know why? Because I have approached women for dating only a handful of times in my life, and my success rate is zero [1]. Now if someone told me “hmm, outside of any particular context you’re roughly a six, so you should probably expect a success rate around 30%” then I would be like “oh, huh, that’s way higher than I expected and mildly-but-not-implausibly in disagreement with my past experience, I guess I should try a bit more and get some more data”. If someone told me “hmm, outside of any particular context you’re roughly a six, so you should probably expect a success rate around 5%” then I would be like “cool, that’s useful to know, I am not actually going to invest that level of time and/or emotional effort for such a small expected payoff”. If someone told me “hmm, outside of any particular context you’re roughly a six, so you should probably expect a success rate around 70%” then I would be like “I don’t believe that at all, but if I did buy it, I would conclude that I have been doing something very wrong compared to whatever is supposed to work 70% of the time, and I should probably figure out what that is”.
… other than the specific context of dance events, which account for basically all of my dating success to date; I’m a pretty good dancer. And in a dance context specifically, it’s taken very little effort to pick up women, it happens sometimes almost by default.
Oh look, it’s the thing I’ve plausibly done the best research on out of all humans on the planet (if there’s something better out there pls link). To summarize:
Using data from six different pickup artists, more here. My experience with ~30 dates from ~1k approaches is that it’s hard work that can get results, but if someone has another route they should stick with that.
(The whole post needs to be revamped with a newer analysis written in Squiggle, and is only partially finished, but that specific section is still good.)
And if numbers from pickup artists who actually practice this stuff look like 5%-ish, then I’m gonna go ahead and say that “men should approach women more”, without qualification, is probably just bad advice in most cases.
EDIT-TO-ADD: A couple clarifications on what that graph shows, for those who didn’t click through. First, the numbers shown are for getting a date, not for getting laid (those numbers are in the linked post and are around 1-2%), so this is a relevant baseline even for guys who are not primarily aiming for casual sex. Second, these “approaches” involve ~15 minutes each of chatting, so we’re not talking about a zero-effort thing here.
then I’m gonna go ahead and say that “men should approach women more”, without qualification, is probably just bad advice in most cases.
I’m in a pretty different context than you but like, you’ll learn more about yourself and others if you do this. More data at zero cost (once you internalise the thing about rejection being fine actually).
Relevant addition: Tappé et al. 2013 find a rate of ~60% “yes” responses for real-world experiments for the question “I have been noticing you around campus. I find you very attractive. Would you go out with me tonight?”
My best guess is that those numbers are inflated, for multiple reasons:
Experiment was ended upon receiving an answer to the question, i.e. “yes” or “no” or probably “something else”
This contrasts with the PUA data, which records if women actually show up.
Experiment was done on randomly selected people, whereas the pickup artist data is on the women the guys were attracted to.
The experiment was done on a campus, so there was some level of pre-selection present.
My guess would be that the study has a bunch of social desirability thrown in there, possibly also influenced by how startled the women were.
I think it depends a lot on who you’re approaching, in what setting, after how much prior rapport-building.
I’ve gotten together with many women, all of whom I considered very attractive, on the first day I met them, for periods of time ranging from days to months to years. I consider myself to have been a 6 in terms of looks at that time, having been below median income for my city for my entire adult life.
The most important factor, I think, were that I spent a lot of time in settings where the same groups of single people congregate repeatedly for spiritual, intellectual, or recreational purposes. This creates an automatic point of connection and trust, even if you’re meeting someone for the first time.
Almost everyone I have asked out said yes, but this is probably because I tend to feel out their interest and availability before asking them outright. That’s facilitated by the community event, which gives us plenty of time to interact more and more intensely or back off if the interest isn’t there.
There was a lot of “men, you should approach women more” in this one, so I’m gonna rant about it a bit.
I propose a useful rule: if you advise single men to approach women more, you must give a numerical estimate of the rate at which women will accept such an advance. 80%? 20%? 5%? 1%? Put a FUCKING number on it. You can give the number as a function of (other stuff) if you want, or make it conditional on (other stuff), but give some kind of actual number.
You know why? Because I have approached women for dating only a handful of times in my life, and my success rate is zero [1]. Now if someone told me “hmm, outside of any particular context you’re roughly a six, so you should probably expect a success rate around 30%” then I would be like “oh, huh, that’s way higher than I expected and mildly-but-not-implausibly in disagreement with my past experience, I guess I should try a bit more and get some more data”. If someone told me “hmm, outside of any particular context you’re roughly a six, so you should probably expect a success rate around 5%” then I would be like “cool, that’s useful to know, I am not actually going to invest that level of time and/or emotional effort for such a small expected payoff”. If someone told me “hmm, outside of any particular context you’re roughly a six, so you should probably expect a success rate around 70%” then I would be like “I don’t believe that at all, but if I did buy it, I would conclude that I have been doing something very wrong compared to whatever is supposed to work 70% of the time, and I should probably figure out what that is”.
… other than the specific context of dance events, which account for basically all of my dating success to date; I’m a pretty good dancer. And in a dance context specifically, it’s taken very little effort to pick up women, it happens sometimes almost by default.
Oh look, it’s the thing I’ve plausibly done the best research on out of all humans on the planet (if there’s something better out there pls link). To summarize:
Using data from six different pickup artists, more here. My experience with ~30 dates from ~1k approaches is that it’s hard work that can get results, but if someone has another route they should stick with that.
(The whole post needs to be revamped with a newer analysis written in Squiggle, and is only partially finished, but that specific section is still good.)
You are a gentleman and a scholar, well done.
And if numbers from pickup artists who actually practice this stuff look like 5%-ish, then I’m gonna go ahead and say that “men should approach women more”, without qualification, is probably just bad advice in most cases.
EDIT-TO-ADD: A couple clarifications on what that graph shows, for those who didn’t click through. First, the numbers shown are for getting a date, not for getting laid (those numbers are in the linked post and are around 1-2%), so this is a relevant baseline even for guys who are not primarily aiming for casual sex. Second, these “approaches” involve ~15 minutes each of chatting, so we’re not talking about a zero-effort thing here.
I’m in a pretty different context than you but like, you’ll learn more about yourself and others if you do this. More data at zero cost (once you internalise the thing about rejection being fine actually).
Relevant addition: Tappé et al. 2013 find a rate of ~60% “yes” responses for real-world experiments for the question “I have been noticing you around campus. I find you very attractive. Would you go out with me tonight?”
My best guess is that those numbers are inflated, for multiple reasons:
Experiment was ended upon receiving an answer to the question, i.e. “yes” or “no” or probably “something else”
This contrasts with the PUA data, which records if women actually show up.
Experiment was done on randomly selected people, whereas the pickup artist data is on the women the guys were attracted to.
The experiment was done on a campus, so there was some level of pre-selection present.
My guess would be that the study has a bunch of social desirability thrown in there, possibly also influenced by how startled the women were.
Wow. This must be the pickup equivalent of cold call telemarketing.
I think it depends a lot on who you’re approaching, in what setting, after how much prior rapport-building.
I’ve gotten together with many women, all of whom I considered very attractive, on the first day I met them, for periods of time ranging from days to months to years. I consider myself to have been a 6 in terms of looks at that time, having been below median income for my city for my entire adult life.
The most important factor, I think, were that I spent a lot of time in settings where the same groups of single people congregate repeatedly for spiritual, intellectual, or recreational purposes. This creates an automatic point of connection and trust, even if you’re meeting someone for the first time.
Almost everyone I have asked out said yes, but this is probably because I tend to feel out their interest and availability before asking them outright. That’s facilitated by the community event, which gives us plenty of time to interact more and more intensely or back off if the interest isn’t there.