4

Be Rude, Mean and Selfish (in High School)

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3

Wear Branded Clothing

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Just to be clear, we're not saying that wearing expensive designer clothing makes people trust you or like you -- obviously dressing up makes an impression. No, the science says that just sticking a visible label on the clothes makes all the difference, and it's not in the way you'd expect.

For example, in one study, researchers made a lady go out into the mall and ask people to fill out her survey. On the day that she wore a Tommy Hilfiger sweater with a visible label, 54 percent of people helped her out. Not bad, right? Just wait -- on the second day, when she wore the same exact sweater with the label removed, only 13 percent of people took the survey. In another study, researchers who were wearing designer clothing collected twice as much in charitable donations as those who were wearing plain clothing. In another, subjects judged a job applicant in an interview as more worthy of the job, recommending a 9 percent higher salary for the one with the label. The label always won.

"Screw the interview. You're obviously chief surgeon material."

And it's not that the labels just make us think of the wearers as wealthy or stylish; it actually makes us trust them more as people. What the hell?

On one hand, the labels are doing exactly what the manufacturers hoped they would, only to a much greater (and crazier) degree: We're told that the brand is high quality, so the man who knows to buy it must have great judgment. But it's a trap we fall into due to evolution.

The problem is that for most animals, other members of the species can tell at a glance how healthy/fertile/awesome they are -- a peacock with perfect feathers can only get them by being a healthy specimen. Humans are different -- with our clothes and makeup and talent for bullshit, we don't have any of those easy "Is this guy awesome?" shortcuts that can be spotted at a glance. But we want them very badly -- life would sure be a hell of a lot easier if people just had "trustworthy" stamped on their chest.

It's really the perfect solution.

2

Have Pretty Facebook Friends

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As the more perceptive Internet user may have noticed, during the last few years, a little site called Facebook has hatched into a giant social behemoth that envelops pretty much everything we do. It has become so big that you're actually considered suspicious if you don't have a profile. One neat aspect of Facebook is that within the limits of your privacy settings, anyone can see pictures of not only you, but also all your friends -- something a person with a non-stalker mindset can't do when meeting you in real life. Still, that's just icing, right? It's not as if anyone cares who your friends are.

Wrong. Your friends do matter, and people can and absolutely will determine how much they like you because of them. Or rather, what they look like.

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"I'm telling you, if my kid friends one more ugmo, her ass is up for adoption."

To test this, researchers set up a little experiment. They took two average-looking people -- a man and a woman -- and made them two Facebook profiles each. The profiles were identical save for one thing: What the person's friends looked like. One profile had a bunch of pictures of pretty friends and their pretty profile pics, while the other featured rather more ... homely friends (who hopefully weren't told what the experiment was for).

They then had test subjects judge the profiles, looking at either the pretty friends or the ugly friends. After answering a survey on how much they'd like to meet the person the profile belonged to, the researchers found the shallow truth: People were a cool 20 percent more likely to like the profile just because he or she had pretty friends. Just so they could join that elusive club of pretty people.

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"Dude, it's awesome. They even give you a decoder ring!"

1

Embarrass Yourself in Public

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We devote a huge amount of our time, money and energy to not looking stupid in public. For many of us, this leads to a level of self-consciousness where we flirt with a nervous breakdown whenever we do something that's labeled "wrong" in public. You know the feeling -- all those judgmental eyes staring down at you, all haughty and acting like they've never attended the opera pantsless, with a tiny bow tie on their dong.

"It was just easier than doing it on my neck."

Fortunately, this general aversion to public humiliation offers a neat little shortcut to aspiring ascenders in popularity rankings: Scientists have found that when people see you get openly embarrassed, they tend to think of you as a nicer person.

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"Sharting in interviews is the cornerstone of my career."

A bunch of Berkeley psychology researchers set up an experiment where participants were filmed while they described a very embarrassing moment in their lives. Then, other participants watched the videos and rated how embarrassing the situation was while assessing how kind they felt the people telling the stories were. The participants who were consistently rated as nicest were the ones who were visibly affected by their embarrassing situations, writhing in front of the camera as memories of the Walrus Incident of '99 tormented their brains. What's more, it worked the other way around, too: The people who did have embarrassing stories, yet chose to maintain a careful poker face while telling them, got labeled as selfish and untrustworthy.

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He was elected mayor three weeks later.

Several other experiments verified that our brains indeed have a tendency to associate visible embarrassment with kindness and trustworthiness, whereas all the shame-free Mr. Cools out there end up filed in the same "do not trust" folder with used car salesmen and Internet comedy writers. It makes sense, really: Since the kind of person who gets embarrassed easily is also likely to be extra nice to others in order to avoid getting a red face, we have just sort of started viewing embarrassment itself as an indicator of trustworthiness.

So yes, by all means embarrass yourself on your next date. Just make sure you do it before you get to the bedroom.

Find more from XJ on his blog. He'll also love you for an entire minute if you follow him on Twitter. Just a minute, though.

For more ways to make people like you, check out 7 Great Products for Telling the World You're a Rich Dick. Or learn about 7 Life Altering Decisions Made For You (Before Your Birth).

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out The One Country Whose Elections Are Crazier Than the USA's

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