Tag Archive for Testosterone

Smiling And Gazing Advice For Men

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

A worried facial expression wont lead to positive outcomes! Try a relaxed, confident smile instead.

A worried facial expression wont lead to positive outcomes! Try a relaxed, confident smile instead.

Smiles mean a lot more than just happiness, such as fear and stress. However, smiles due tend to appear most from happiness, and as a result of genuine feelings of optimism. They also indicate confidence and hopefulness. We know that smiles are infectious, yet men hardly ever sport them. I suppose men’s lack of smiles has to do with the vast amount of testosterone that courses through their bodies, coupled with the fear of appearing subordinate to others, but men should not let that be a deterrent. If men walk through life with a big grin, people will notice and stop them, wondering what good news they hold, or what successes they have achieved.

Laughter and smiles, when done by men, show women that they have interesting and successful lives. Men can easily try a smile experiment to measure the exact value it has, and they’ll know they’re onto something when they receive smiles in return. While it is true that some smiles won’t be well received, be they ignored or returned with a grimace, it shouldn’t deter the smile experiment from continuing. The object isn’t to impress everyone, rather it is to plan seeds in the minds of others that you are friendly, open to conversation, and that good things happen to you, and that if they associate with you, these good things might benefit them too.

Even stone faced women can be broken by persistent smiling so long as it is done properly. When smiling, men should never face women straight on, rather they should smile at an angle. The straight on look can be construed as aggressive and confrontational. Men should always break smiles by looking down, not away, up or to the side. A downward look shows that you are prepared to submit and that you are not a threat. If eye contact is made, keep it brief, lasting less than three seconds and always add a small genuine smile with head cocked at forty-five degrees. Avoid head on stares, prolonged looks, or abnormal or persistent eye widening, as these will surely send the wrong message.

Even if women don’t respond immediately, it doesn’t mean that a future encounter won’t lead to positive things. In public we are habitually in displacement mode so most women initially see people as objects rather than people worthy of interaction. Men should understand that women find others, especially strange men, as potential threats to their safety. If, or rather when, because after all this is a numbers game, a man finds a willing participant, the sensation will be immediately exhilarating for both parties. However, smiling isn’t the end of the story, it’s the start. Smiling endlessly can become creepy so if invitations to conversation seems welcome, graduate to verbal dialogue and take things to the next level. If your experiment fails miserably, try adding a sharp nod or even a joyous “hi”, “hey”, or “hello.” A verbal connection or a more obvious nonverbal signal can serve to snap people more forcefully out of their public displacement.

Smiles are inexpensive so don’t be afraid to use them, but do keep in mind that the vast majority of people, especially in crowded urban areas, might ignore them totally. Remember though, that just because the cues are ignored does not mean that it is a personal rejection, since logically, these people have no sense whatever about the smiler, they don’t even know them! Remember too, like a lot of things in life, smiling-success is a numbers game.

Why Men Don’t Seem To Get It And Why Women Are Half The Problem

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

Some men are naturals - the rest of us need to work at it!

Some men are naturals – the rest of us need to work at it!

Research conducted in 2008 by Dr. Coreen Farris of Indiana University shows that men just don’t get it when it comes to sexual signals. Her study had an initial group of both males and females rate images based on four categories (called affect groupings): friendly, sexually interested, sad, or rejecting. From that sample they chose an additional set of eighty men and eighty women to rate the final images into affect groupings once again. A photo was kept if the majority of men and women categorized the picture into the same affect group. The results showed some interesting findings. Men not only mistook non-sexual cues for sexual cues, but they also mistook the sexual cues as non-sexual.

The confusion men have when rating women’s nonverbal sexual signals probably has everything to do with the fact that men have twenty times more testosterone than women and so their perception of the world is viewed through ‘sex-coloured-glasses’. In terms of evolution and efficacy of spreading their seed, this makes sense, even though at times it can lead to unwanted or embarrassing confusion. Because of men’s inability to read cues properly, this chapter is heavily aimed identifying cues that will help men read the signals more precisely. The subtext of the chapter though, is aimed squarely on women to turn them into better deliverers of their true intent so as to avoid unwanted solicitation. In other words, women carry a clear fifty percent share of the fault when it comes to poor courtship cues, as are men in reading them. If women can improve the clearness of their signals, men can, and will respond more appropriately. When it comes to men, a precise, direct signal is best.

Who Mirrors More, Men Or Women?

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

Research conducted in 1981 by researcher Marianne La France out of Boston College found that women are much more likely to mirror others than men, and the more feminine the women the greater their mirroring. This isn’t surprising at all given the nature of mirroring. As we have covered thus far, mirroring is a form of empathy and rapport building. Mirroring is also a form of submission because one person must initiate positions first, and the other must follow. Women are nurtures by nature and so tend to want to build relationships, one of the tools they use more proficiently is mirroring.

Further research suggests that men are four times less likely to mirror other men, than women are to mirror another woman. Women have also been found to frequently mirror men, whereas men rarely, or only reluctantly, mirror other women, with only one exception, that being during courtship. The reason for this lies in Erno Herman’s research with Leiden University in Netherlands who in 2006 discovered that the administration of testosterone to subjects reduced empathetic behavior through facial mimicry. As mirroring requires an emotional connection in the form of empathy, estrogen rather than testosterone, is a more facilitative hormone. This gives us vital clues to the role of mirroring, and brings us back full circle to the core issue dealt with here, which is that mirroring is a form of rapport building, of which men are less prone to take advantage of.

The fact, as we have covered extensively in this chapter, remains that mirroring can be a great skill in most all facets of life. If you don’t already have it as a part of your repertoire, you should, and if you are a man, should consider it strongly because chances are you don’t do it naturally. Women rate men who display more facial emotions as more caring, intelligent, interesting and attractive which is freely reported by women especially during courtship. This trend naturally extends throughout other areas of life, especially business, but a certain degree of minimizing of expressions should be used when men deal with other men. The research tells us that men tend to rate men who mirror facial expressions in a negative light, describing them as more effeminate. Along the same lines, women who adopt more serious facial expressions when interacting with men, will be seen by them as more intelligent. Thus, to appeal to the opposite sex, the rule of thumb is to use “sex swapping characteristics” whereby we bend toward the sex’s preferences to create more similarity. In other words, men should appear a bit more feminine when interacting with women, and women should appear a bit more masculine when interacting with men.

Men are at an inherent mirroring disadvantage though as researchers have found that they can make fewer than one third the facial expressions that a woman can. What they lack for in facial expressions, though, they make up for in emotional expressions through the body. Therefore, reading body cues is a much better area to consider when reading men. The lack of facial expressions in men, which might be seen as a natural disadvantage, is turned into dominance because men appear less emotional and more “in control”, appearing to maintain their “cool” under more circumstances than women. This doesn’t mean that men fail to experience emotions, because brain scans tell us otherwise. It just means that men are better able to hide their emotions from the rest of us. Women shouldn’t be fooled into thinking men aren’t listening or even empathizing with them simply due to their pan-faced expressions. Women should though, be more watchful of men’s body language, that which happens in areas other than their face, to read their emotions and when they mirror should follow what happens with their arms and legs rather than what happens in their faces which will only be minimal. Conversely, men should do their best to mirror women’s faces as best they can, and make up for whatever expressivity is lacking through other body language channels.