Saturday, July 23, 2011

Motivational Speaker's Greatest Resource?

The Motivational Speaker's Greatest Resource?

Half of the Motivational Speaker's audience is women and women control the emotional tone of each and every audience.

Understanding what women love and respond to makes for not only a great motivational speaker but gives you a greater understanding of life in general.

When I speak I keep track of how various stories I tell impact my audience...particularly women.

Women matter 5 times as much as men in determining...well everything when it comes to my business.

So just what do women love about MEN?

Women Love Men Who Give Them...

Ask any woman what traits she wants in a man and within the top 3
will be...a sense of humor.

The other top 2 will probably be some form of intelligence and
ability to support her in the style to which she would like to be
accustomed.

And humor, it now appears, is one way to judge the other two.

Because when humor is done well, it takes smarts and social prowess.

In his article in Psychology Today, "Laughing All the Way to the
Bedroom",(May 2011) Gil Greenhouse, psychologist and anthropologist,
says:

"The ability to say something funny requires a high level of
intelligence. If you memorize a thousand jokes, that doesn't make you
a person with a sense of humor. Sense of humor is more subtle. A good
sense of humor is about timing, the ability to say the funny thing at
the right time and to the right people. Telling a sexist joke in a
room full of women will probably not score many points with the
audience. Humor is largely an interpersonal activity that requires a
high level of emotional, social and also mating intelligence."

He's right (and you should follow Greenhouse as he is cutting edge in the field).

He goes on to say that humor is valued highly by women, and is
listed as one of the top 3 qualities by women in online dating ads.

He also quotes another study done by Eric Bressler, Sigal Balshine
and Rod Martin in which they found that women want a man that will
make them laugh.

Men of course start trying to impress in grade school.

Then the path looks to be ...dominance.

The way of the bully.

Fortunately, shortly after grade school, the second way to social
status emerges.

Prestige.

Writing on this subject on Huff post,(May 2011) Scott Barry
Kaufman,(Cognitive scientist, personality psychologist and professor,
NYU...another guy you need to follow!) :

"The dominant path is paved with conceit and arrogance, whereas the
prestigious path is paved with accomplishment, skill and prosocial
behaviors."

Hmmm.

And Science Daily reports: ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2008) - A new study
in the journal Personal Relationships reveals that women prefer mates
who are recognized by their peers for their skills, abilities, and
achievements, while not preferring men who use coercive tactics to
subordinate their rivals....

Women most likely avoid dominant men as
long-term romantic partners because a dominant man may also be
domineering in the household.

Back to Scott Kaufman.....he points out that humans use humor
effectively to pursue and conquer sexually.

"Studies by Gil Greengross, Geoffrey Miller, me (Kaufman) and others have
indeed shown the benefits of humor for intersexual selection -- funny
people do report having more sex and more sexual partners, and they
report starting to have sex earlier in life".

I don't think he's joking...if you will...

Which do you think came first, the sex or the laughter?

Kaufman further bolstesr his idea that there is evidence that humor
is related to sexual selection and is a positive social trait with
this study..

Men's sense of humor on women's response to courtship solicitations:
an experimental field study Nicolas Guéguen Université de Bretagne Sud

Summary? - Producing humor might function as a fitness indicator
associated with greater desirability during dating selection.

An experiment was carried out in which a male confederate in a bar was
instructed to tell (or not) funny jokes to two other male
confederates. A few minutes later, when the second two male
confederates left, the first male confederate asked a female who was
near his table and who had heard the funny jokes for her phone
number. The previous expression of humor was associated with greater
compliance to the male confederate's request and with a higher
positive evaluation. The possible effects of humor are discussed from
an evolutionary perspective.

The official version of this article is available at:
http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2466/07.17.PR0.107.4.145-156
Cited as: Guéguen, N.

The result was that the man got the womans phone number more
frequently when she thought he was funny AND when she thought his
friends thought he was funny.



Both humor and social proof at work here.


He has prestige and he is funny.

Humor is PART of prestige.

It's part of intelligence.

And its very attractive to women.

If you want a woman to fall in love with you, you'd better know how to make them laugh. One other reference for understanding women better would be a book about subtle influence. A good read.

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