Vanessa Van Edwards shares a speed-dating study where women who used 29 availability signals, like quick glances and angled body language, got approached most often regardless of looks. Signaling availability matters more than physical attractiveness in how people pursue you.
Here's what's really important is we are more attracted to people who like us. And this isn't just physically or in romance, it's also professionally and socially. We are attracted to people who signal availability, and they've actually tested this. So researchers looked at a bunch of singles in a dating scenario, like a big bar speed dating scenario, and when they had the singles mingle, they found that the women who signaled the most availability were approached the most and got the most numbers. By the way, can you guess in a 10-minute speed dating test how many availability signals did a woman have to send to a man for him to approach. 29 signals specifically: quick glances, slow savor smile, and angling the body towards them and like dipping towards them. And in sum, all the women in the experiments— is they found that the women in the experiment, no matter how attractive they were, it did not matter if they were quote unquote attractive or what they were wearing or what their hair was like or what their makeup was like. All that mattered was how many times they signaled availability, which puts us in control of how people treat us.
