I was a bit amused by an article I encountered today in The New Yorker, entitled "The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins, Pickpocket." I was just enjoying the fun, and then it mentioned he studied a book common in the PUA world, Robert Cialdini's "Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion" which is commonly cited in the pickup community (I was just talking about it today).

The New Yorker article takes a while to get to the core issues for seddit, methods of directing peoples' attention. People are wired neurologically to respond in certain ways to specific stimuli. This is a lot of what we do as PUAs. There is an interesting video of this guy on YouTube, I thought this was a good way to explain how I connected this with PUA.

In this video, the guy steals something easy, the guy's chest pocket handkerchief. Then he gives it back, and while tucking it into the guy's pocket, his other hand is stealing the phone out of his pocket. This is a classic "misdirection," he is focusing the mark's attention on a big overt action which draws his attention away from the more difficult covert, small action.

I would compare this misdirection to what we do with techniques like disqualifiers. We draw attention to the overt declaration we're not interested, then the woman doesn't notice when we move closer and create intimacy and attraction. Or put it another way, we are directing the attention of the woman where we want it.

There are probably a lot of ways this could be useful information. I'm not saying there are many specific practical tips in this article, but the mindset of the guy is interesting. There are some things I noticed that were related to what we do. The article mentions how he shakes hands and uses pressure with his fingers to see if he can move the person closer and to his left. If he can, he knows he can move the person around and do his pickpocket act. This is what we call a Compliance Test. You can screen out noncompilant people. But if you get a positive result, you can keep them going up the Compliance Ladder easily.

Well anyway, a lot of the early techniques were developed by Mystery, who was a stage magician, and he attempted to integrate some of these ideas into pickup. I thought this article would be amusing to the type of guys in seddit, and might give some background to the neuroscience of how we persuade people to do things.

EDIT: I forgot the link to the video. Added, in context above.