A small Psychological Insight

There was a woman who lived next door to a family with a noisy baby. Originally she never particularly liked the baby; in fact she felt the baby was rather annoying when it kept crying in the afternoon while she was trying to take a nap. Then one day, the house the baby was in caught fire, and the family was all out. The woman rushed in and managed to save the baby. From that day on, she liked the baby very much and did not dislike its afternoon crying any more. Someone asked her:"How come you like this baby so much more now?" The woman replied:"Oh, because I risked my life for it!"

So we can see that people like something more when they contribute towards it. This is because of two reasons. The first reason is because they feel that they have made "an investment" in it, whether the investment be of money, of time or of effort. This is why you see guys chasing after girls for years and spending tons of money to buy expensive gifts for them, they feel "it would be a great pity" to stop chasing, because of the sunken costs involved.

The second reason is because of the feeling of superiority. This is why you see older people feeling very happy when a younger person asks for their advice on anything; they feel that it shows respect, and it proves the greatness of their intellect and character to be asked for advice. If you don't believe me, go back and ask your boss for advice on your work (when he is in a good mood), and I bet he will like you more after that.

Looking at this, we can tell that if you want someone to like you, the idea is to make them invest in you. Girls often do this inadvertently by telling a guy about their sad moments or how their boyfriend doesn't treat them well, and the poor idiot immediately falls: "She must be confiding in me because I'm a manly man!" Idiot. The idea is to:

1. Make the party you are interested in care for you. Maybe tell a sad story or something, but don't reveal all in one go.
2. Make the other party help you in some way. If you can't achieve this straight out, maybe do an exchange, eg: you treat the other party to eat in exchange for him/her to do an assignment for you. At least both sides have a sunken cost then.

This works for both genders!