How to Make People Like You - Summary of The Like Switch - Part 1

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll give a quick summary of a book I just read called The Like Switch by Jack Schafer.  I've boiled down many of his points into just the basic formulas and tactics for getting people to like you.  This is the first of two parts.

I just read this book called The Like Switch: An FBI agent’s guide to influencing, attracting, and winning people.  It’s written by this guy Jack Schafer, who as stated, was an FBI counterintelligence agent and psychologist. He developed all of these strategies to convince people to do stuff — like spy on their own countries or confess to crimes.  His whole view is that, if you can get someone to like you, they are WAY more likely to do what you want them to do.  Like that saying, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. 

Now that is a pretty manipulative premise, but I think you can put a lot of these techniques to good use — with just getting people to like you as it’s own goal. These techniques can be helpful to anyone, but it seems to me that a group of folks who might be interested in this — is teenagers.

Now, most teens have been told by a parents or an adult that if you want someone to like you, you just have to be yourself!  And they instinctively know that that is a bunch of crap. Just by virtue of being in middle school or high school — being yourself with all of your quirks and idiosyncrasies — can be a real liability.  Unless, of course, you are inherently like-able and all of these social techniques come totally naturally to you — in which case, you wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place. 

What’s great about this book is that it boils down being likable into some formulas and tactics that are easy to understand and easy to put into place.  In this first part, I'll cover:

• The Friendship formula
• Friend Signals
• Enemy (or Foe) Signals

First — the Friendship Formula. Here’s the formula:

• Friendship = Frequency + Proximity + Duration + Intensity

Basically, what this means is the more often and longer you spend time with someone who you have some degree of interest in, the more likely you are to become friends.  So, just think about any of your friendships and, odds are, this formula probably works — at least it worked at the beginning of that friendship.

• Frequency is how often you see someone
• Proximity is how close you are to them physically
• Duration is how long a period of time you spend together and 
• Intensity is basically how much interest you have in each other.  This can be shared interests or another kind of intensity like curiosity or attraction.

If you are an FBI agent trying to convince a foreign asset to spy on his or her country, you can work each component of this formula to create a relationship with that asset.  To be honest, from a female perspective, artificially following this formula to gain friends feels a little stalkery, so I’m not going to dwell on it too much. All I can say is that if you are naturally spending more time, more frequently with someone that you enjoy, you are likely to become friends. Now let's talk about

Friend Signals

These are some very straightforward tips that you can follow to indicate to others that you are a friend, not an enemy.  Almost all of us has at least one friend who always gives the impression that she is aloof, or mad, or bitchy, right?  She might not even realize that she is giving off those signals. Here’s how to avoid that. Do the following 3 things:

• Eyebrow Flash - as you are approaching someone, give a quick up and down of the eyebrows — it can be just as you are saying “hi”.  Watch people’s expressions loosen up as you do this.
• Head Tilt - tilt your head to one side or the other. It doesn’t matter which.  Basically, titling your head exposes your carotid artery and means that you are confident and not afraid.  And finally,
• Smile - a genuine smile, not a fake one. People can tell the difference. Here are the components of a real smile, you can practice in the mirror: the corners of your mouth go up, your cheeks raise, and wrinkles appear on the sides of your eyes.  Here’s a fake smile. Here’s a genuine one. 

Enemy Signals

I won’t go into great detail here, but here are some of the enemy signals, Schafer calls them “Foe Signals.”  Don’t do these unless you are trying to make an enemy.  Scowling, staring for more than a second, looking someone up and down, rolling your eyes, standing in an aggressive posture, for example with your hands on your hips, or standing too close.  Those all show that you are not coming in peace.  

Join me for the second video, where I'll cover:

• Body Language
• The Golden Rule of Friendship
• Conversational Body Language
• How to tell when someone is lying

Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!