Robert CialdiniFounder Cialdini Institute & NYT Bestselling Author

Flowers DOUBLED His Dating Success—Here’s Why #shorts

17 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this short video, Robert Cialdini describes a field study conducted in a French shopping mall where a man attempted to collect women's phone numbers as they passed various stores. His success rate was low overall, but it doubled when the women were walking past a flower shop. Cialdini explains that the presence of flowers primes a romantic mindset, which makes women more receptive to a dating request. The co‑speaker frames this effect as a form of pre‑suasion: an unconscious influence that leverages an evolutionarily‑derived rule of thumb linking flowers with romance. The clip highlights how subtle environmental cues can dramatically alter social outcomes.

There's this interesting study. A guy goes to a shopping mall in France and he tries to get women's phone numbers as they pass various shops so he could call for a date. But in neither of those cases was he very successful. But there was one kind of shop that doubled his success rate when women were passing it: a flower shop. Why? Because flowers put women in the mindset of romance.
Not consciously, pre-suasively, by exploiting a rule of thumb passed down to us by evolution.