Now that I’m on the dating scene again I’ve been thinking a lot about how the things I’ve learned as a behavioral psychologist apply to the oldest game of them all.

Disclaimer: I wouldn’t say I’m a Casanova, but I do know how to hold my own in the dating arena. Take these suggestions/observations as you wish, but do realize that, much like all the dating advice out there, these are just what work for me.

Changing Venues

If any of you have read, The Game, you know that one of the suggestions Strauss gives is that when on a date, you should always change venues a number of times. This apparently gives the impression that the date has lasted longer and thus that the two of you think know each other more than you actually might. But is there any psychology to this?

It turns out that there is. Our perception of when an event happened in the past is correlated with how many memory markers we have. For example, imagine you were are asked to list all the things you can think of since you last went to an amusement park and also your subjective assessment of when you last went to the amusement park. What research shows is that these your subjective assessment will be correlated with the number of items you listed. Some fancier experimental design has also demonstrated that there is a causal connection here: thinking about events actually leads to the memory change.

So when you’re on date, make sure you go for drinks before and after dinner. With three venues you’ll make it feel like you’ve known the person forever (or at least just a little bit longer)!

Comparability

In Dan Ariely’s recent book, Predictable Irrationality, he makes the point that when going out looking for dates, make sure that the person you bring along is similar to you…but slightly worse on a few dimensions. This is in contrast to bringing your ugly socially awkward friend. Seems strange right? Clearly you’ll look that much better next to the socially awkward friend than to the slightly less attractive one. So why bring the latter?

It turns out that Dan found when we are more likely to make comparisons between objects when those comparisons are easy to make. It’s easy to say “Jim and Steve are pretty similar, but Jim is a little taller…I’ll go with him” than to say “Tom looks like a troll…I don’t even want to think about him…Jim’s okay I guess, but nothing special.”

The point is that you can easily compare two similar people and find the better one, but not so with two dissimilar people. Next you’re out on the town, bring Steve along and let Tom find his own luck!

Leave Them With Something To Remember You By

Let’s assume that you’ve successfully managed to be witty and charming enough to convince someone to go on a second date with you. You’re about to finish your first date with a hug (and maybe a kiss). What should you do? Simple, leave them something to remember you by. Something small and simple works best.

I had a first date where the woman I was with was cold and so I leant her my scarf. This was a cheep $5 scarf I got from some random vendor. If I never saw it again, it wouldn’t be end of the world. But the benefit I got from giving her something was huge.

First, she was no obliged to return the scarf. This meant actually seeing me again, thus increasing the chances that the second date would happen. Second, every time she saw the scarf in her home, she thought of me. Psychology research on fluency suggests that the more one thinks of something, the more one tends to like it (mere-exposure effect…and yes, there is plenty of research on satiation which goes the other way, but when a stimulus (or person) is novel, mere-exposure tends to win out). Third, I now seem like a nice guy who’s willing to lend my things to a person in need.

There is no down side to do doing this, and like I mentioned, plenty of psychology to yield positive potential.

What other dating advice to you all have? Is it backed by anecdotes or by science? I’d love to hear it all!

Thanks to a resent switch from Blockbuster Online to Netflix, I was recently able to stream This Is England, a dark drama about a young boy growing up in 1980s England. Shaun, the protagonist, after the loss of his father, finds himself searching for acceptance in a world that seems to be cruel and unfair. This isolation allows him to become brainwashed by a gang of young skinheads, ultimately ending in a brutal beating of one of his friends. The cinematographic work was impeccable and truly captured Shaun’s cries for acceptance and companionship.

Overall, this film was magnificent and deserves both my 5-star rating and the particularly high IMDB rating of 8.0. I was drawn to the characters (most notably Shaun) and was really able to see how someone looking for acceptance could be sucked into a world of violence and hate.

It’s not a light film, but one worth watching.

Hi folks. Sorry to do this, but I’ll be away till next Monday (April 28, 2008).

Have a great week and see you all soon.

I will start this post with the punch line: Friday night I was escorted out of the New York Scientology Headquarters and told to never come back.

Rewind two hours and you’ll find me, on a trip to New York, thinking about the despicable organization known as Scientology. I have read many articles (most notably in Rolling Stone Magazine) describing the brainwashing tactics of Scientology, but I always felt like I couldn’t fairly criticize them without first hand experience. So instead of spending my night drinking with friends, I decided to venture into the demon’s lair. I walked over to 46th st. (just near Times Square) and told the receptionist that I was interested in learning about Scientology.

I decided before walking in that I would a) use a fake name and address (no need to get spam from them) and b) with the exception of my motivation for being there I would be as truthful as possible. I’ve heard that no matter how well adjusted you are, Scientology has a way of finding your “flaws.” I consider myself to be very well adjusted and successful and so I wanted to see just how deep these people would need to dig to find something “wrong with me.”

First, let’s start off by saying that everyone was incredibly friendly. Every person I saw smiled at me and introduced themselves with the apparent desire to be friends. I was offered coffee and cookies on numerous occasions and when I asked for water or the use of the restroom, people were eagerly accommodating.

The adventure began with a 15 minute video about the basics of Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard’s first book on the subject of the mind (though clearly not his first work of science fiction). The video was surprisingly well produced but was as much a work of fiction as anything I’ve heard about Scientology (see Lord Xenu). Basically, I was informed that I have two minds: an analytical mind (conscious mind) and a reactive mind (unconscious). The former is what I have control over, and the latter is the root of all the problems in my life.

The idea is that when I am unconscious (due to trauma like a car accident…though not due to sleeping…go figure) my senses are still absorbing everything around me and other people’s words get imprinted in my reactive mind. Then when I experience something similar (say another bad situation with a car) those incidental comments creep into my conscious in negative ways. For example (straight from the video), if I am unconscious in an ambulance and the EMTs are talking about breaking up with a girlfriend, then next time I have a traumatic experience with my girlfriend around I will break up with her (I wish I were making this up).

Okay, once the video was over (as was any remaining belief that this was a legitimate organization) and they had me fill out a short questionnaire (pretty benign). Enter sate left: Ray, a scientologist of 38 years. He comes over and asks me if I wanted to have a chat about the video and any questions I may have. I was all too eager to go with him. We went into a small office with a desk and a two chairs spaced pretty far apart and began the discussion (note that the door was always open…this is important for a later point).

Our discussion lasted for about 40 minutes and, although I would love to go over every single idiotic thing that he said, I’ll just give you the broad brush strokes. The gist of the conversation was me asking him questions about Scientology and him answering “you should get auditing and read Dianetics.” Every time I pressed him on any of these issues it was apparent from his facial expression that he was agitated and defensive.

I asked him if there was empirical data supporting the benefits of Scientology. He responded that L. Ron Hubbard did some back in the ‘50s but because the American Psychological Association wouldn’t accept them as credible, he never published them. I asked him if there was any other data. He responded that for the real answers I should get auditing. This went on and on.

The point is that he never actually answered any of my questions. The other point is that throughout the entire discussion he was incredibly pleasant and inviting. He was smiling, making jokes, and generally trying to put me at ease. He was the soft sell. This would soon change.

At the end of our discussion Ray suggested that I complete a personality test that would help determine where Scientology could help me improve. I sat down with the 200 question “Oxford Capacity Analysis” and began answering the questions. I won’t begin to address how ridiculous some of these questions were (see here, here, and here for that). Anyway, I answered all the questions, had them “graded”, and sat down with Rebecca, a Scientologist from the age of 14.

The mood with Rebecca was very different from what I had experienced with Ray. We sat in a similar office but now the door was closed and Rebecca sat about 8 inches away from me. She was an attractive blonde woman in her mid-20s and always had a smile on her face. She presented me with the following:

This was the analysis of my personality based on the “rigorous” research that L. Ron Hubbard conducted back in his prime. First let’s talk about the test and then we’ll talk about Rebecca some more.

As it was explained to me, higher numbers are better and anything at the bottom needs improvement. As you can see I’m amazingly active and aggressive, but woefully critical, lacking in accord, and withdrawn. Scientology to the rescue! Immediately I was told that although my “active” and “aggressive” scores were high, they were actually bad because they were above my “certainty” score. Huh? I though higher was better? It turns out that actually higher is only better when they say it’s better. Otherwise it’s bad. Just trust them, they know what they’re doing…they’re professionals.

My first suggestion to Rebecca was to rescale the results based on “certainty” as a neutral point so that the rest of the results could be more easily interpreted by people. She answered that she had been trained to interpret these results and that I didn’t understand them because I was unqualified (note the Masters degree on my wall and the eventual PhD in a behavioral science). This back and forth went on for another 20 minutes. She would explain to me how bad my life was and I would explain to her that my life was great. She would tell me that the test was 98-99% correct. I would tell her that “correct” implies accurate which implies a correlation with reality…since they don’t have a way to assess reality, the “correctness” of this test was spurious.

Now onto Rebecca herself. Despite her friendly appearance, she was the hard sell. She insisted on several occasions that she wasn’t trying to sell me anything but proceeded to place the Dianetics book in my lab four times (after I placed it on the desk) and told me that the best course of action given my results would be to get “auditing” more than six times (I forget the exact number). She stared at me constantly and didn’t express much emotion after our initial introduction. At one point she told me that my lack of communication skills was evident since I kept avoiding eye contact. I told her that was because she was constantly staring at me and that most people would react the same way.

Towards the end of my discussion with Rebecca, and after one too many attempts to get me to sign up for auditing, I lost it. My voice got louder and my body language grew rigid. I “explained” to Rebecca that I thought the results of this test were bogus and that I didn’t appreciate being lied to and made to feel inferior just so that I would sign up for auditing. I told her that I would never sign up for something that I knew to be so ridiculous and ungrounded in truth. I think she got the idea. She tried to take my personality test results back but I insisted that I keep them and stuffed them into my pocket. She then told me to leave.

But I wasn’t done. I needed to speak with Ray first. Thankfully he was in the next office over with a potential recruit (not that that stopped me). I told him (with some vigor) that I had never been quite so angry with an organization as I was just then. I explained that I thought Scientology was a cult designed to extract money from genuinely distressed people and that it was causing far more harm than good. I then turned to the potential recruit and implored him to get out before it was too late. I explained to him how Ray couldn’t answer any of my questions and how wrong all this was.

Apparently I didn’t realize quite how loud I was yelling because after a couple of minutes of this several other Scientologists were around me. They informed me that if I didn’t leave they would call the police. With three of them in escort, I left.

I was so angry that I just stood outside of the building (in the rain) for a few minutes trying to cool down. To my surprise, the potential recruit that I saw in Ray’s office came out and approached me (I didn’t get his name). He asked me if I could explain some more why I was so down on Scientology and so I did. We talked for about 15 minutes and he thanked me for giving him so much information. He said he had experienced some real trauma in his life and that he was looking for some help. He turned to conventional religion (Christianity) and that failed him. So he wanted to try Scientology. Thanks to my rant in Ray’s office, he realized that this was not the answer either. I told him that there were many well trained psychologists and social workers in the city that could help him out. We looked up some social workers on my iPhone and he wrote down the numbers. I don’t know what will become of him, but I hoping that he gets some help. And not the type of sham help that Scientology is doling out.

In all, I was given the soft sell by Ray and the hard sell by Rebecca. Had I come to them with real problems, maybe I would have been convinced. Maybe I would have drunk the Kool-Aid. Who knows? They’re clearly very good at sucking people in and keeping them there. Now that I’ve cooled down, I realize just how scary this is. They prey on people’s insecurities and provide apparently scientific evidence (Oxford Capacity Analysis) to show them just how screwed up they are. Then they dig in and get you to buy buy buy.

These people need to be shut down.

There are some glowing reviews for Audrey Niffenegger’s first novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, and I believe they are well warranted. Rarely do I find myself genuinely upset when finishing a book due to the knowledge that soon I will fail to have the joy of it sitting on my lap. Rarely do I feel so connected to the characters in a novel that I forgo sleep in order to get just one more chapter in. Well as rarely as this happens, it happened with this book.

The story is about a man who, due to a genetic disorder, spontaneously time travels, often to points in his life, present and past. The nonlinearity of the story draws you in and constantly has you wondering when an event happened and how it relates to the bigger story. Aside from this fascinating take on reality, the love story that Niffenegger tells is simultaneously heart warming and wrenching. The connection between the two lovers, Henry, the time-traveling protagonist, and Claire, his wife, spans all normal understanding of what love is and how it progresses through time.

The book also raises some interesting questions about causality and free will. Can one change the course of events when traveling back in time? Is the future occurring at the same time as the present and the past? Questions like this will make you wish that The Time Traveler’s Wife were twice as long as it was.

Take my advice: buy the book, read it, and thank me later.