Male Attractiveness Relativity

A man's attractiveness often varies from group to group. While a woman's attractiveness is fairly constant and unchangable, a man's attractiveness is both malleable and perceptually relative. How he is perceived (by both men and women) depends on who he is seen with and what his interactions are like. Those who are students of social dynamics and human attractiveness know that there are three major factors that signal a man's attractiveness in the dating market:

- Leader of men
- Protector of loved ones
- Pre-selected by women

Women mostly judge a man's attractiveness by his social prowess. A man who displays confidence, is charming, well-connected, and is admired by others is seen as very attractive. However, women rarely judge a man's attractiveness directly. Typically, there are many mental shortcuts used to quickly assess a man's attractiveness. This is one of the reasons why pick-up artist materials work well. They teach shortcuts that enhance one's perceptual sexual market value. Alpha mimcry techniques work quite well to fool people short term. While there is a difference between apparent connectedness and genuine connectedness, the heuristics used to measure connectedness and confidence do not allow for such a distinction to be made. A few moments of observation are used to judge a man's attractiveness, though such a judgment may not be accurate.

For example, if a man enters a venue and immediately walks over to talk to someone, as an observer you have no way of knowing whether this fellow is already friends with that person, or if they are a perfect stranger to him. If a man walks into the room with a pretty girl next to him, he immediately appears desirable, even though she may just be a friend or his sister. Due to the use of heuristics in judging a man's attractiveness, first impressions are incredibly vital. While making a great first impression and subsequently not dropping the ball are the key to picking up strangers, the game is entirely different within longer-term social groups. Yet, the same fundamental rules still apply.

When extremely limited information is available, the first impression is practically all the information a person or a group of people have about a man. However, with each new interaction, more information is acquired and a man's attractiveness is reassessed. First impressions are either further established or discarded. Someone may make a great first impression but subsequently show themselves to be less confident, charming or connected than initially perceived. Alternately, sometimes a person makes a poor first impression but consistently shows themselves to be a high quality person in future interactions. First impressions are not discarded easily, but they certainly are not etched in stone.

Because each group is different, the same man may be perceived very differently by various groups. Accordingly, his relative attractiveness may diverge greatly from group to group. At work, a man may seem very distant, detached and anti-social, while with his college buddies he is the life of the party. A man may be seen as very positive and uplifting person by church friends, while viewed as cynical and sarcastic by his family. These perceptual differences are often partially rooted in reality and partially skewed by inaccurate perceptions or extenuating circumstances. Observers who notice a man's interaction with one group may reach extremely difference conclusions about him than observers witnessing him interacting with a different group.

Is one set of observations a more accurate determinant of his attractiveness than another? I think not. Instead, it seems clear that a man's attractiveness genuinely varies. A man who acts anti-socially at work may genuinely be quite unattractive within that context. But, the same man may be extremely attractive when he is with a peer group that includes several hot girls he's dated, some cool friends who genuinely look up to him, and a few people who are very happy to have him around. Not only are perceptions of a man's attractiveness quite subjective, but his very attractiveness may vary greatly from one group to the next.

For those men who seek to apply Game as more than a short-term fix, they have to seek their ideal element and capitalize on that. Where is a man perceived as the most attractive? Why is he perceived that way by them? How can he capitalize on attraction-builders and minimize attraction-killers? Inner Game is about knowing yourself, your strengths and your weaknesses, and utilizing that knowledge to your advantage.