Are you sick and tired of reading pick-up artist advice or ways that you can “fake it til’ you make it” when it comes to talking to people?
Do you want to be the person you are, but simply struggle making the impression that you want to make?
Today I want to share three little-known secrets every nice guy should know so you can use “nice” to your advantage and get what you want.
For those of you who are typically labeled as “nice” and feel like people are trying to walk all over you, I also cover some action steps on being assertive.
This in-depth post also covers:
- How to combine being “nice” with social skills to be even more attractive to women
- The importance of speaking up if you struggle with being assertive
- The science behind why people respond to kindness with kindness
- The risks of being perceived as “nice” and how to overcome them
Secret #1: Women are attracted to “nice”
It’s hard to define “nice.” In fact it’s so difficult that a study tried to define it, here’s what they found:
“In their qualitative analysis, Herold and Milhausen found that women associate different qualities with the “nice guy” label:
“Some women offered flattering interpretations of the ‘nice guy’, characterizing him as committed, caring, and respectful of women. Some women, however, emphasized more negative aspects, considering the ‘nice guy’ to be boring, lacking confidence, and unattractive.”
Not many people want to be with someone who lacks confidence or is boring, but not many people want to be with a jerk either.
In a study by Urbaniak & Kilmann in 2003, women viewed online dating profiles of 3 different profiles of men named Todd, one who was “nice,” one who was “neutral,” and one who was “jerky.”
The profiles were identical except for suggestions of traditional qualities of niceness. Women selected the “nice” Todd as the person to date twice as often as “neutral” Todd, and eight times as frequently as “jerky” Todd!
So what’s the takeaway here? The takeaway is that showing “nice” characteristics can take you a long way as long as it’s not coming from a place of insecurity or self-doubt.
Personally speaking, I’d characterize my husband as a “nice” or “good guy” and that’s because he’s genuine, comfortable expressing his true self and displays confidence. He always displayed kindness towards me and in turn, I reciprocated it…
Why start with kindness? The Reciprocity Effect
The “reciprocity effect” refers to people’s willingness to respond to a positive action with another positive action.
This is probably where the idea of “kill them with kindness” comes from, hoping that taking initiative and showing the initial positive action will prompt the other person to reciprocate positively.
In a classic experiment by Dennis Regan, he paired up his subjects with a partner (who was actually his assistant). He divided his subjects into two groups. In both of the groups, the assistant would disappear for a quick break.
In the experimental group, when the assistant returned he gave the subject a soda even though the subject did not ask for it. In the control group, the assistant returned empty-handed.
After the experiment was over, the assistant asked the subjects to buy raffle tickets from him.
Those who received the soda bought more raffle tickets from the assistant than those in the control group, even though neither group had asked for the drink.
The takeaway here is that when you act kindly upon someone, they’re more likely to feel favorable towards you, enough to reciprocate a positive action.
Secret #2: Nice is not enough–the importance of social skills
Simply being nice is not enough though.
To get the biggest bang for your buck you have to couple your social skills while displaying “nice” characteristics.
“A study showed that when social dominance and ‘nice’ characteristics intersect, women have a positive perception about men when they rated them on their attractiveness and desirability.” (Jensen-Campbell, Graziano, & West, 1995).
When men solely behaved “nicely,” women rated them higher when it came to things like attractiveness and dating desirability.
When men solely behaved “socially dominant,” there were no impact on these judgments.
But when men displayed both social dominance and nice characteristics they were perceived to be even more attractive.
The takeaway here is that being nice is not enough, you have to make the right impression and have the right social skills to show it in a way that is not “jerky.”
This may sound troubling if you display nice characteristics but you are unsure of yourself when it comes to being socially confident.
Secret #3: Overcome the Downsides to Niceness
As I mentioned earlier, some people categorize niceness in negative ways such as being shy, lacking self-confidence or not being socially confident.
Some people also use the word “nice” because they don’t know how else to categorize someone they may find boring or unattractive.
For those of you who are already perceived as nice, it’s important to distinguish between the characteristics of kindness, sensitivity to emotions and empathy with being someone who gets taken advantage of or mischaracterized.
For those of you looking to assert yourself or speak up, here are some tips on how to do so without being a jerk.
1. Why you should speak up
When you feel like you should speak up about something there are two tempting things to do. You can either:
- Say nothing at all and regret it later or
- Lose your temper. You may raise your voice, call someone names or try to make someone else feel bad. That would be taking the easy way out.
Rather than name-calling someone, be the bigger person and think about what you want to get out of the conversation. In a helpful book called Crucial Conversations they suggest that when your blood starts to boil, you pause for a moment and ask yourself, “What do I want for myself, the other person, and the relationship?”
What this means is that you don’t have to choose between belittling someone or getting what you want. You can create an additional option to still get the outcome you want while not losing your temper or risking your relationship.
For example, if a friend flakes on you when you were supposed to hang out, you may be tempted to call him up and complain about what a bad friend he is and how he has no respect.
Rather than taking that route, you can pause and ask yourself what you’re actually trying to get out of this and what it means to your friendship.
You stop and realize that all you simply want is for your friend to call you next time something important comes up. You still want to be friends with him, you just don’t want to wait around for no good reason.
Analyzing your next step in this context can prevent you from blowing up at him.
If your original plan was to just stay say nothing, bringing it up proactively front-loads the work of having that “crucial conversation” so that it doesn’t happen to you again. It may seem scary to do the first time, but once you do it you will break your toxic mental model of avoiding confrontation.
You now also have a way to bring it up as more of a conversation than an accusation to avoid the negative aspects of confrontation that you may be fearful of like bickering and raised voices.
This strategy forces you to pause and process the information before being reactive.
2. How to turn confrontation into a conversation
So you’ve decided that instead of staying silent or losing your temper, you’re going to confront him in a manner that creates a safe environment for the two of you to communicate.
You decide to bring it up to him, but he seems to be misunderstanding where you’re coming from or simply denying the fact that he did something wrong.
If the conversation takes a turn for the worse, here’s one of my favorite conversation strategies from Crucial Conversations called “contrasting.”
“Contrasting is a don’t/do statement that:
- Addresses others’ concerns that you don’t respect them or that you have a malicious purpose (the don’t part)
- Confirms your respect or clarifies your real purpose (the do part)”
GROOM SHROOM 
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