“Because it is so typically in our best interests to be consistent, we easily fall into the habit of being automatically so, even in situations where it is not the sensible way to be. When it occurs unthinkingly, consistency can be disastrous. Nonetheless, even blind consistency has its attractions.”

-Robert B. Cialdini, PH.D

“Various studies show that if prior to asking a favor, you can get a person to make a statement that is consistent with granting your request, you’re likely to get a change of attitude and then her compliance. What you want to do is have her agree to an idea or a way of thinking that will neutralize her own objection... This tactic is so highly effective because human beings have a strong need to be congruous with their attitudes, beliefs, and actions.”

-David J. Lieberman, PH.D

As evidenced by these two experts on persuasion, humans have a strong tendency to act consistently with their sense of self and previous statements. You’ll see how this applies to seduction, and particularly complimenting girls, in just a bit.

I’ve been asked this questions many a time; “I heard that you shouldn’t compliment girls, instead you should try to bring them down a notch. Should I be complimenting girls?” Of course you should be! Then I get “Well, how should I compliment girls without being creepy or weird?” I’ll get into that during this post.

With the popularity of Neil Strauss’ The Game and VH1’s The Pickup Artist the idea of the “neg” – making an ambiguous or negative statement to an individual in order to induce certain reactions – has brought forth the misconception that in order to seduce a woman you must bring down her ego, and never compliment her. This is simply not true.

Giving women some validation, and making them feel good about themselves will never hurt your game. In fact, one could argue that the simple “compliment” is Seduction’s oldest and most forgotten technique. The problem that has arisen is that women have become socially attuned to the compliment’s effectiveness. They have had so many guys come up to them with compliments that are not genuine that they are immediately skeptical of any compliment’s validity.

So one of the keys in complimenting a woman is to be genuine in what you say. No tricks or manipulation techniques here… the best way to compliment a woman is to actually mean it. You would be surprised how good women are at sniffing out a compliment that is not genuine.

I went through a phase in my “game” where I was getting laid a lot – but by a certain type of woman who bought my bullshit. The “quality” girls were getting away from me because everything I said to them was “game” and my compliments weren’t genuine. The “phony” girls would buy my bullshit, and immediately be attracted to my phony persona. Needless to say this led to many unhealthy relationships.

In order to genuinely compliment a girl about qualities you like about her, you must know what you want in a girl. What qualities do you really enjoy being around? Our friend David the Asian Rake has a great post about this whole subject here, which I would highly recommend reading. He explains the whole concept in full detail, but I’ll give you my version of it.

I, like David, have 2 sets of qualities for girls I like; one set for good girls and one set for bad girls. Most girls tend to be somewhere in between, but if a girl has all my “bad girl” characteristics, she will most likely be one-night-stand/fuck-buddy material, and if she had all my “good-girl” characteristics she may be girlfriend material.

Here is my list. Feel free to borrow qualities from mine when making your own, but make sure your list is unique to you.

Bad Girl Characteristics: Spontaneous, Fun, Open-Minded, Non-Jealous, Adventurous, Independent, and Expressive

Good Girl Characteristics: Caring, “Chill” (someone I could just relax around), loyal, sweet, understanding, generous, positive person, considerate, reliable, ambitious

Once you have this list, and you notice a girl that you are attracted to displaying one of these qualities, reward her by complimenting her with it.

For example, I recently had a fling with a very cute, very outgoing and fun chick that was leaving the country in several weeks. When we were hanging out at a bar, I told her, “You know what I like about you? You are so darn adventurous! I feel like I could just start my night hanging out with you, have no plans whatsoever, and by the end of the night we would have completed like 8 crazy adventures and had some crazy stories to tell,” I later proceeded to tell her, “Let’s go on an adventure… I got an idea, let’s try to convince that lady with the flowers that we are married, and get some free flowers from her.” We proceeded to have our adventure, it strengthened our bond, and the end of the night ended very well.

The verbal structure I prefer is the simple,

1)     “You know what I like about you?”

2)     “You are so darn (characteristic you like about her)_.”

3)     “I feel like (explain what is awesome about this quality in her).”

This does 3 things in each part of the structure

1)     Peeks her interest, creates curiosity and intrigue with the question. Anytime someone here’s “you know what I like about you?” they will instantly be interested.

2)     Validates her with a compliment about a positive quality she has that you value

3)     Provides a rationalization to your compliment in a fun and playful way. The “reason” for your compliment is important because it shows you don’t have an ulterior motive, and just genuinely appreciate a characteristic about her. “I feel like” is also a nice little touch, because we know how girls love “feelings”, and this just opens up her emotional side.

You could come up with something for all of your characteristics, like “You know what I like about you? You are so darn considerate. I feel like if I was ever feeling down or low, I could just call you up and you would say the sweetest, most considerate thing to me, and I would feel better right away.”

When combining the skill of complimenting a girl on certain characteristics with the Psychological principles above, it is clear that we could make things a little, dare I say… easier when bringing a girl home. Likewise you can also mold “girlfriend material” girls to have traits that you value.

Let’s say you’re at a house party and meet a cutie who is pretty talkative and social. She clearly is extroverted and makes her opinion known. After she disagrees with you on something, you say… “You know what I like about you? You’re so independent. Most girls tend to always agree with me, but I think that’s boring. I feel like we could have a full-on debate and have a blast. Does it drive your friends crazy when you disagree with them or are they just used to it?”

Her response to this could be that it does drive her friends crazy, or that she is not that disagreeable. Either way she is qualifying herself to you, which puts you in the role of the selector, which as we talked about last post, is always a good thing.

Notice how we transition from a conversation that could be combative, her disagreeing with you on some issue, to something all girls love to talk about 100 times more… themselves. Most unenlightened college boys would simply get in an argument about whatever issue you were talking about with her at this point. Instead, you are acknowledging that you disagree, complimenting her, and moving to a far more interesting conversation topic.

Now, after a few hours, the night is coming to an end, and over the period of the night you have upped the ante. As she has displayed more and more “independent” traits, you have sexualized it. Comments like, “Wow you are so independent, that is so sexy, you need to stop that or we’re going to get in trouble,” are money. As David Lieberman would say, she is becoming more congruent with her identity as an independent woman, an identity that she enjoys because you have given her some validation for it.

But wait… she’s with friends. You dropped that you are going back to your pad for the after-party and she should come with, and she has told you that she wants to come, but her 3 roommates come up to her and say “Hey, we’re all going home in a few minutes, get ready.” Normally, when a girl’s social group makes a decision to leave, they are all leaving. But not this girl, you see, over the past few hours she has taken on the identity of a very independent woman who makes her own decisions, and again, her actions are going to be congruent with this identity. So she tells her friends, “I’m actually going to A-Bar with him, I’ll catch up with you guys in a few hours.” Bamm… their objection has been neutralized.

All my “bad girl traits” will help neutralize some objections when used properly. Compliment a girl on being spontaneous, and it won’t be a big deal that she randomly ended up at your place. Compliment a girl on being fun, make out with her later in the night, then say “that was fun,” and escalation will be a cinch. Compliment a girl on being open-minded, and when you want to try something really freaky with her sexually there will be no objection. The list goes on…

And if a girl looks like she could be “girlfriend material” compliment her on “good girl traits”, sometimes even before they have manifested themselves fully, and you will be amazed and how fast they do manifest themselves, and she adopts them into her identity.

The fact is that people have the need to be congruent with their identities. And if you project a certain identity on them and give them validation for it through compliments, they will start to grow into that identity.

Use this info wisely, and don’t forget… it’s ok to compliment girls. Just make sure you do it right.

Oh… and definitely don’t forget to check out David’s post. It really compliments this post well.

Cheers,

Francis