Social Power
Generally speaking, the person with the greatest amount of
Social Power is the individual who gets the greatest amount of attention with the least amount of effort. A few examples:
- Someone who expends a lot of effort but gets little attention comes off as weird, creepy, socially inept, or as someone who just doesn’t get it
- Someone who gets a lot of attention, but at the expense of a lot of expending effort, comes off as an attention-seeker, or an entertainer at best
- Someone who gets a lot of attention, while seemingly expending little effort, comes off as attractive and desired
- Someone who neither expends effort nor receives attention can be either invisible, or can sometimes seem mysterious and intriguing (since most people in social situations are competing for attention)
The rule of expending the least amount of effort – something I’ve taken to calling the
Law of Effort – extends to every different kind of socializing category there is. When it comes to dominance displays (e.g., one man trying to “tool” another, like telling him, “Hey bro, nice haircut. I used to have the same cut in first grade”), the man exerting the least amount of effort wins. So, if one man attempts to tool another, but the recipient of the attempt merely smiles in a bemused way and then returns to whatever he’d been doing, the aggressor has lost the competition. When it comes to conversations, the individual doing the lion’s share of the talking and questioning and verbal footwork is the person with less social power – this even extends to text messaging and online communication (where the person sending shorter messages with less attempts to build a connection generally has more social power). The Law of Effort also underlies investment and compliance, which we’ll cover in a few chapters.
Another aspect of social power is
need. The more someone in a conversation seems to
need something from another person or group – whether it’s approval, acceptance, a connection, romantic interest, or something else – the lesser his or her social power is. The more independent and non-needy an individual appears, the greater his social power can become.
Finally, social power is also impacted by
giving. The man who is most giving of social value – whether that comes in the form of genuine compliments, being inclusive, or by helping others to feel connected to him – tends to have the greatest amount of social power.
What does social power do for you? Well, one of the ways that women judge the desirability of a man is by weighing how much social power he has. The greater your social power, the more desirable a mate you make.
