You know, all these warnings by women about players and their charming ways wouldn’t be necessary if women weren’t instinctively falling for their charms. Think about it. You won’t read too many articles warning women away from boring beta males. Women manage to Heisman those guys all on their own without directives from Cosmo.
Vox notifies,
Take a bow, Heartiste. Once more, science underlines Game:
The article is titled ‘How to Spot a Manipulator’, but it may as well be a truncated game guide for men.
One study tried to determine which personality traits pickup artists, men and women*, share.
The article begins by explaining,
In some ways, pickup artists use traditional tactics that fall into the category of persuasion. Whether it’s yourself or a product you’re trying to sell, you rely on methods of persuasion any time you attempt to influence someone else’s attitudes. You’re hoping that by influencing someone’s positive attitudes toward the item or person you’re promoting, you’ll change that person’s behavior.
Pickup artists have to influence people who have never met them to like them almost immediately. They rely on general strategies that others use to make a good impression, such as seeming attractive, charming, or successful. Unlike a person truly interested in getting involved in a romantic relationship, though, the pickup artist needs merely to look like someone who’s looking for love. These qualities—being manipulative, self-centered, and insincere—are exactly those that show up in the personality constellation known as the “dark triad” of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism.
The HEXACO model of personality structure informs us that Dark Triad people are low on the Honesty-Humility factor. Lemme tell you a leetle something about honesty and humility as pertains to What Women Want™: Honesty is relationship lube, not attraction lube. All else equal, no woman makes the decision to fuck a man because he’s honest. And humility is actually counterproductive to sparking a romance; chicks dig those overconfident men.
Interestingly, they went into the research assuming that, despite the stereotype, women as well as men could fit the criteria—and in fact, the study included plenty of female pickup artists based on the self-reports the team collected.
*Female “pickup artists” are really just cockteases with borderline personality disorder, as you will see this study pretty much confirms. Unlike male pickup artists who are interested in increasing the quantity, quality, or both, of their conquests, female pickup artists are mostly just interested in manipulating a lover or two for incessant ego validation and, when the men she twirls around her fingers are inexperienced betas, for material gain.
In the pilot study that began the project, Jonason and Buss asked 102 participants—all undergraduate students and two-thirds of them female—to describe their experiences with people who had “pursued short-term sexual encounters.” The 71 acts the participants described ranged from abuse (verbal or physical) to avoidance (not returning emails or phone calls). Between these extremes, those who sought to keep their interactions as uninvolved as possible engaged in behaviors such as avoiding non-sexual intimacy (such as hugging), keeping conversations superficial, failing to introduce partners to family and friends, and seeming promiscuous or blatantly announcing that they were only seeking short-term sex.
Lessee… avoiding cuddling and pillow talk… playfully teasing… remaining somewhat mysterious… refusing to relinquish too quickly to expectations of commitment.
Sounds like abundance mentality coupled with Aloof&Indifferent Game. This combo is irresistible to so many women, it’s a wonder more men didn’t evolve the ability to express it naturally. (It’s such a wonder, in fact, that I am tempted to believe there was a time, a long epoch, in our human past, when strong environmental pressures dissuaded women from cleaving to charming players or dissuaded players from openly displaying their talents.)
Male and female pickup artists were equally likely to use the tactics that would keep the relationship from evolving into a one of longer-term intimacy, as well as to seek ways to keep the relationship sexual. However, there were some gender differences: Men were more likely to use violence directed toward their partners, while women were more likely to let a partner know that they were only in the relationship for the sex.
Both sexes use what they know works.
In the all-important personality domain, pickup artists showed specific traits, including antisocial tendencies. As predicted, they were also more likely to be narcissistic. Again, though, male and female pickup artists differed in some aspects of their personality profiles: Women who acted openly promiscuous, for example, were higher in psychopathy. Men high in Machiavellianism were more likely to adopt the tactic of not integrating partners into their lives.
This is interesting. Promiscuous women are, as this study found, CRAZIER than promiscuous men. And our real world observations confirm this. It makes sense. Men are built — some rapscallions would say evolved — for promiscuity, or, at the least, for a tendency to be promiscuous when opportunities arise. Men are thus better equipped, mentally and emotionally, for no-strings-attached sex than are women.
Persuasive charming men — the kind of men women LOVE LOVE LOVE — will manage their promiscuous lifestyles by CARING ENOUGH for their lovers that they don’t lead them too deeply into highly charged emotional and commitment expectations. Heh.
Overall emotional stability also played an important role, but one that differed for men and women: Women who were most likely to engage in keeping the relationship from becoming intimate were also the least emotionally stable. And for women, but not men, self-rated promiscuity was also related to conscientiousness scores.
Again, sex-focused, relationship-averse women are emotionally unstable and self-destructively impulsive in a way that sex-focused, relationship-averse men aren’t. The sexes are different on a fundamental level. Perchance, to deal with it.
So how should women spot a charming loverboy? A short list to start them off:
Telltale behavioral signs
- Engaging in unkind acts such as verbal or physical abuse intended to drive you away.
- Avoiding physical intimacy other than sexual.
- Being unwilling to introduce you to the important people in their lives.
- Openly flirting with others in front of you.
- Being unavailable and nonresponsive to attempts to maintain or establish contact.
The joke, of course, is that women can spot these signs and it won’t do a lick of good. It’s like asking men to spot the signs of beautiful women so that they can avoid them for low maintenance frumps.
Telltale psychological signs
- (for men) Seeming to care only about what you can do for them, not how they can help you. [ed: chicks dig a sexually entitled man.]
- (for women) Being late, sloppy, careless, and unconcerned about meeting other people’s expectations.
- (for women) Seeming unstable, worried, anxious, and insecure.
- (for both) Being highly preoccupied with their own appearance, showing undue self-centeredness, and expressing feelings of entitlement.
- (for both) Showing lack of regard for other people’s feelings, not just yours, and expressing lack of remorse for actions in which they caused harm or pain to others.
The few BPD chicks I’ve dated were, without exception, perpetually late and lived in clutter boxes. I knew early on that women who had no interest in keeping up their homes (however humble square-footage-wise) and who preened constantly while simultaneously fretting about their looks (without justification) were basketcases who fucked like champion mares and who would be gone from my life, of their accord or mine, within six months. It’s funny how these female archetypes are universally recognizable. Special little snowflakes, my ass.
