The Natural Chode

Spanish lesson included – free of charge

Here is the REPLAY in case you missed it…

[flashvideo file=/video/AMPfcuk.mp4 /]

If that is something you’ve heard you are not alone. But it’s also something you’ve probably heard about every other program out there.

Either way, I chose to host Decker and the AMP team because I strongly believe that they have some incredible value to offer you guys.

However, as I said in the intro video video, the Authentic Man Program is pretty powerful stuff and can be dangerous for the novice. Like it literally can fuck up your game if you don’t have a strong understanding of HOW to implement it. But on the other hand, if you do you can seriously propel you game to the next level.

Decker’s story of going from being frustrated with girls, to standing in a bar having women just be automatically drawn to him like some magical magnetic force does sound like a load of crap. And I thought it was. When I first heard about it things like that helped more with making me feel worse than actually inspiring me. They just made me feel even more certain that there were some elite few out there that had the magic touch and everyone else was doomed to scarcity supplemented by furious masturbation.

But then I saw it myself. And that was a MAJOR changing point. I learned that the way I used to see things was total and complete bullshit. It was about some secret magical touch or the perfect pickup line, or having some kind of “value” that you have to obtain externally. It wasn’t even really about what I was saying or even who I was.

It was just HOW I was.

I learned that HOW I was being with woman is what was turning them off, when I wanted to be turning them on. And I used a lot of what Decker and the Authentic Man Program teach as a way to correct this. But the thing is, once you experience that sort of thing first-hand – either yourself, or watching someone – it is a really difficult thing to describe. Because once you experience it, you automatically relinquist the need to describe it. It’s really a catch 22. But still, some people try, and the problem is few people do it well.

So if you want to FULLY benefit from this kind of advanced level shit, it really helps to have someone who can translate for you and break those massive ideas down into small bites-size easy to understand pieces. Kind of like this

Someone who has seen both sides and understands the needs of the “community guy”.

So I’m going to host a FREE TELESEMINAR…

It’s called “Does AMP Fuck Up Your Game?”

What you will get…

* The Top 5 Most Common “Inner Game” Sticking Points And How To Avoid Them. If you are a victim of one of them, you will learn how to get unstuck and if you aren’t, you’ll learn how to avoid them. I have personally been a victim of all 5 and will translate them for you.

*How To Actually Integrate Presence and Being Authentic Into Your Game Without Turning Into A Soft Little Bitch.

*How Being “Too Authentic” Can [u][b]NOT[/b][/u] Get You Laid. This is probably the most important point to understand. I’ll also give you a super cool way use this understanding to get better results then pretty much any other guy out there.

*How You Can Mix Sincerity And Sexuality To Build Sexual Tension And Desire. This is the number 1 best way I have found to create sexual relationships that last.

>>> Saturday, May 29 @ 3pm <<<

SIGN-UP BELOW . . .

and im not takling about “back then”. im talking about 2night.

went from not being able to get a date on a saturday night to having 3 lined up in the next 3 days.

actually had a girl lined up for tonight. i met her on monday and we made sweet sweet love. was going to write it up, but after i hit 50 it’s hard to give a fuck about LR’s anymore. we planned to hang out again tonight but she had to reschedule for monday. decided i would not be left alone on a sat so i consulted the black book. now, i have been gone from costa rica for 8 months (backpacking for 4 months and then back home in sf for 4 months) so it’s not quite the same as before i left.

ended up calling 5 girls, all either turned me down or wanted to reschedule. decided to go out with my homie. was finally able to pull him away from his magic the gathering online tournament,

so we head out and i am pumped to be doing so, but feeling kind of chode b/c i came up short 5 times in a row.

we head to caccios. and the next part i absolutely love bc this is just how we roll these days.

we grab a beer, chill for a bit, then stroll through the place a couple times “combing”. nothing too impressive. decide to finish out beers and move on.

then some chick waves us down. she knows my boy. she used to work at the store where he used to buy magic cards. he introduces me. it is 2 chicks and they are with some chode, but he is minding his business watching tv.

the chick isn’t really paying me attention and she was just hot – not super hot – in other words not hot enough for me to really try that hard. i get impatient and tell me buy lets go.

he tells me 5 mins.

i decide to stop acting like a stuck up bitch and give this girl some of what i’m sure she wants.

4 minutes later i look over and my boy is making out with his. i point this out to mine, then grab her and follow suit.

you know that impenetrable force that keeps girls from having sex when they want to b/c they dont want to look like a slut? yeah, this was that – but the inverse. highly noteworthy.

we try to pull obviously, but they have to leave with the “best friend” chode. before she goes she tells me she isnt working the next day and sets up a date with me telling me i “better call”.

ok, so far so good. 30 mins in. 1 non-approach, 1 makeout, 1 date.

we head to a club down the block. this place is ghetto as fuck but also a great place to pull from. as we enter there is discussion amongst the bouncers of some guy who just got kicked out for snaking in a gun. it’s packed. we make rounds “combing” as usual. nothing that impressive. decide to head upstairs and see whats up. as were checking it out my homie spots a HOTTIE by the bat. dark hair, sooopper small and super cute with huge tits. he assesses the social context. 2 chicks 1 dude. her beauty was kind of intimidating so i gave him a push, and he goes in.

i observe from a distance. it hooks, things seem to be going awesome. then he calls me over. wtf?

and tells me she said she wants me.

haha awesome. my boy switches to the friend. i dance with her for like 2 minutes and my boy is yelling at me over my shoulder to go for it. i know i already have it, so i’m indulging and making her wait. take her to the other side of the club away to where her friends cant see her. she is 19, studying law, and smoking hot.

i sit down on a bar stool, turn her around and have her grind on me. this has got to be the best most awesome-est position ever. i’m sitting and she is working the cock well and good. excellent.

she starts in on my neck, then sticks her tongue in my ear which got me even harder. this chick was hooked HARD. the entire time we were “dancing” every 15-30 seconds she would come up to makeout with me or tongue down another body part. get logistics – no good. my boy comes over and tells me he gamed up her friend so we could both pull.

thing was they had the “gay friend” with them and he was cool, but she told us there was no way they could ditch him. she asks me to hang out, i tell her tuesday. we leave. she makes out with me 4 times in front of her friends before walking off. it’s got to be the new hair cut.

so the night started in frustration and ended in fortune. next week starts with 3 dates in 3 days. gotta say it’s great to be back in costa rica. i love traveling with a passion, but coming back to a place that you love is just awesome.

i can’t stress enough the value of building a sustainable social circle. one you can leave and then come back to. and one that extends to places that are your’s by association, by building relationships with friends that have social circles (connecting with connectors).

g’night.

Aye!

So I was talking with a mentor of mine the other day. Thing is, he’s not a dating mentor – he’s a marketing guy. But he said something really powerful  that applies PERFECTLY to the dating game and I think it will really help you out.

The question was this…

What was your defining moment?

And his response…

“Mine was when I realized that I didn’t need to understand everything to be able to use it. Just like you don’t need to understand the physics that make a internal combustion engine work to drive a car. You only need to know what you need to know to make it work and do what you require.

The same applies to, well… everything, but specifically to our line of work thinks like tracking programs, ftp programs, scripts, hosting, etc… you only need to know enough to make it work beyond that its quite possibly harming your business by dedicating time to it.”
—

Well, hell-muthafucking-yeah!

I can’t help but think about how applicable this is to the dating game. Just the same, you don’t need to understand all the intricacies of how attraction works – just how to make it do what you want. That’s it – really! Anything beyond that is quite possibly harming your game by giving you yet ANOTHER distraction for not getting out there.

If you’re frustrated, stop giving yourself more things to think about (read: more excuses) and just get out there and DO SOMETHING! What are you going to “think” your way into her pants? Cahmm awwwwn!

Getting what you want with women will require some thinking yes, but compared to the amount of “doing” that is required, there is no contest. Plus “thinking” is something you are already good at right? I mean, it IS what got you here in the first place.

So let’s move on to the other part of the equation that – hands down – you need much more than anything else — DOING! Thinking and doing go hand-and-hand. But the only way to get to the point where you understand – how to make attraction do what you want – is DOING!

It is about doing those certain simple things force a result. The things that matter. Things like approaching that girl your attracted to. Or even better, going to an event like Social Symposium and THEN going out and approaching that girl your attracted to. The point is simply getting out from behind that computer screen (yeah, the one your looking at RIGHT NOW), out of that virtual world of fantasy and thought, and into the real world, a world ruled by action where what you do has a real and immediate effect.

Without those experiences, nothing that you think about women will ever matter. It’s all just masturbation (mental, and otherwise). DOING is how you get those experiences. Without EXPERIENCE, your just a spectator. And you can’t win a game from the sidelines.

So get up off the sidelines and get in the game. Stop waiting, stop looking for permission, stop thinking and just DO SOMETHING!

You’ve done enough thinking.

Now, it’s time for action. And the time is NOW …

Git-r-done!!!

-Keen

Undoubtedly, you know that confident guys are more successful with women. Fa’sho. But what does that even mean?

So often concepts like confidence are so overused and poorly defined that they eventually become meaningless. Like, you know your supposed to be confident, you’re sure of it, but you don’t know how that actually translates to what to do.

So let’s start with a clear definition…

What I am going to talk about is not what most people mean when they say confidence – which is *situational* confidence. That kind of confidence – while helpful -  is insufficient because it depends on circumstance. What I am going to talk about is *core* confidence.

What is core confidence?

Core confidence is the disposition to experience yourself as competent in conquering challenges and obstacles and believing that ultimately you deserve what you desire.

Notice that this is not about competence, it is about EXPERIENCING yourself as competent. This is because when it comes to game, EXPERIENCING is what matters most. In other words *how* you are is what counts – not *who*.

See, your own style and personality are enough to attract what you want – you just have to do it in the right way. A way that she can EXPERIENCE.

So here are my 5 pillars of core confidence which you can use to do exactly that. Use them as a guide for HOW to do what you already know you need to:  Being the strong confident guy you already are at your core.

1. Ownership:
Being willing to own what you say and what you do without evasion or denial. Not seeking permission or approval from others, instead giving permission and approval to yourself. Doing what you want to because you want to it. Not experience yourself as being “on trial”.

2. Personal Responsibility:
Realizing that you chose your actions; that you are responsible for your own life and well-being and for the attainment of your goals; that you need the cooperation of other people to achieve your goals and must offer value in exchange; and that the question is not “Why?” but instead “What needs to be done?”

3. Assertiveness & Authenticity:
Saying what you mean and meaning what you say; being authentic in your interactions with people; expressing your truths in social contexts; refusing to be fake in order to avoid disapproval; being willing to stand up for yourself and your ideas.

4. Purpose:
Knowing what you want; having goals and identifying what actions are needed to attain them, then organizing what you do in the service of those goals,and monitoring your actions and outcomes to be sure you stay on track.

5. Congruence:
Living with consistency between what you say and what you do; honoring your commitments, exemplifying in action what you value; being good to yourself and likewise, being good to others.

This is my talk for the Costa Rica lair back in Nov, 2009.

Basically I took 2 guys out of the crowd and hammered away at their questions for a good hour plus.

Some good stuff in there on sexual attraction, escalation, logistics, relationship management among other topics. I’d imagine this will be helpful to you if you have been in the game for a bit but get stuck on the sexual part of things or are even if you are brand new as there were a diverse range of guys in the audience covering pretty much all skill levels. . . .

So I have taken the recording, chopped it up into bite size pieces, and put it up here for you as a way to say thanks for coming to hear me speak in San Francisco.

So, enjoy =)

* Check out the audio and then leave me a comment with you thoughts *

Part 1/4 - [podcast]http://www.naturalchode.com/keencrlairtalk-01.mp3[/podcast]

Part 2/4 - [podcast]http://www.naturalchode.com/keencrlairtalk-02.mp3[/podcast]

Part 3/4 – [podcast]http://www.naturalchode.com/keencrlairtalk-03.mp3[/podcast]

Part 4/4 - [podcast]http://www.naturalchode.com/keencrlairtalk-04.mp3[/podcast]

I cant even call this pickup b/c I didn’t “pick her up” I just selected her, and then let her pick me up.

This is pretty much my MO these days: select, lead, and let.

Here’z the rundown…

BTW- This is about as ideal of an example as I’ve got of my “short and sweet method”. Something I’ve taught a few guys, but haven’t really seen anyone else master.

1. Intro.
SF State campus running track. Was jogging and saw her. An Asian girl WITH ASS? Yes, it’s possible. This cutie has a beautiful runners physique with ever so awesome curves and incredible DSL’s. She was jogging. I said what’s up. She was startled, I was unreactive, it went to good. Saw her jogging a couple times after that. We never really talked about anything substantive, mostly just joking around, everything brief and positive. Oh yeah, and I got her number.

2. Casual meetup.
Fast forward a year. After leaving the country and then coming back I reinitiate with this this. We text back and forth. A friend comes up from LA and invites me out to Sugar Cafe. I invite her. She shows up with 2 other co-workers (a couple). A winning situation I refer as the perfect storm. (There are very few times it’s been like this and I haven’t gotten her that night). The couple is really cool and I win them over quickly. I buy first round for everybody but the couple refuses, so it’s just me and her. Have her try a new kind of vodka, she likes. Then we pairs off on the 2 facing couches near the window.

It looked like this…

[couple]
table
[   us   ]

We chill on the couch. More of same as above. Floods of positive emotions. We’re sitting so close as our thighs are touching, I’ve got my arm casually extended resting behind her on the couch, kind of around her, kind of not. And my mind flashes to the perspective of an onlooker. I realize that I have this girl completely drawn into me, which is very noticeable visually. Then her friend mentions something about how we’re like in our own little world, which my girl completely disregards.

This is that bubble of love/liminal space thing, a culmination of all elements of attraction and rapport working together harmoniously. She offers to buy the next round. Conversation and chillin continues and it gets to that moment where you just know you’ve got it. Oooooh how I love that moment. I ask her what she is doing after (i.e. let’z do dis shit). And then the unexpected happens…

Her- I live with somebody.
Me- uhhh yeah, and?
Her- It’s a guy.
Me- uhhh yeah, and?
Her- He’s my boyfriend.

She tells me she has been with him since high school. Hmmm interesting. I stop and think for a minute, taking into account what exactly is going on here.

Me- Soooo what your basically saying is…it’s on it’s way out?

And she flips, completely withdraws and leaves. I’m unfazed and proceed to have an awesome night.

3. Twin Peaks.
I text her while I’m out a few days later asking what’s the deal with the BF thing. She is being vague. I tell her this is weird over text and try to get her to come out. She doesn’t.

A few days later I text her this bad Asian yomama joke “yo mama so asian she cried when you got a B on your report card”. About a week later she invites me to go out on a Friday. She asked me on a Monday, so I knew it was 4real.

pic

Funny, I always used to ask girls out and make them promise they weren’t going to flake – and even then they STILL always flaked. Now THEY ask me out and promise me they won’t flake. All the rest of the details are irrelevant, but I will include them – just for you.

Mishap #1 - I had forgotten I had something else to go to at El Rio the same night. Decided to try to work with it, rather than against it.

[pic]

Mishap #2 – The “wingwoman” problem. I seriously lost my cool wit this one – almost. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to say she should bring a friend for her or for me. Obviously, I wanted her.

[pic]

I even had to hit up DL for advice. His suggestion? Bring him. DL, you’re such a pimp.

Still I couldn’t think of any thoughtful way of responding, so I just texted her back with “Anh?”

Her- Wha?
Me- Exactly.
Her- What?
Me- Que?

And apparently, that worked. Hahaha.

The day of I text her thinking if I pick her up early I can be sure she will be alone.

[pic]

Problem solved.

So I pick her up, greet her with a kiss on the cheek. She looks incredible. Skinny jeans, high heels, the works. Brief convo then blast some dope electro house to keep the fun on high. (Fukkk Offf – Love Me Hate Me Kiss Me. Highly recommended). I was gas brake and dippin all the way to the club. Told her “This IS the party, welcome to Club B”. Everything was going lovely….and then.

Mishap #3 – The ID problem. We get to El Rio, she goes in, I follow. “ID Please”. I go in my wallet to fetch my license and come up short. Oh yea, left it in my parent’s ride – in Marin. Durrrrrrr. We go back outside and she tells me she is considering going back in and leaving me. I tell her let’s hit Safeway for some boos and do this take-swigs-from-the-bottle high school style. Try to pay for the vodka (incidentally her new favorite), but she won’t let me.

Decide to take her up to twin peaks. She starts trying for rapport. 15 minutes later she asks me if I want to go into the back seat with her. 10 more (made her cum twice with my hand) and she tells me to take my pants off. Awesome =)

Highlights (I wasn’t even going to include this shit because it sounds like it’s all made up or something, but WTF.)

She tells me “When I first met you I was like, who the fk is this guy and why is he talking to me?” Said she tried to run away. But I kept catching up with her. Hahaha.

As we are undressing she says “I’ve been wanting you so bad. I’ve been imagining what it would be like to be with you. That one blew my mind. But I saw it as a opportunity,
So I asked her: “Why? What was it?
She says: “I don’t know, it’s….you, its just you, how you are.”
Not sure what that means, but I like it =)

Then as I am banging her she says “My boyfriend doesn’t do it like that” and keeps repeating it, so I snap off a video. It’s pretty amusing.

She tells me “no one has ever made me cum like that be4″.

Her BF calls while we are doing it. I grab the phone, see it’s him and hang up. Too funny.

I qualified her body with negative appreciation at just the right time. She told me how at 5’4 she was “bigger” than all the other Asian girls in high school. And I told her that’s what I like about her, her curves. “Those scronny Asian girls, there just nothing to look at.” For the record this chick is super fit. And she had one of the cleanest pussies I’ve ever. I feel a case of yellow fever coming on.

Afterwords, Her: “Did I initiate this or did you? Me: “You did, but you can say it was mutual if that makes you feel better.”
Her: “Did you expect this?” Me: “I didn’t know what to expect. That’s what I like about you”.

Takeaway
I have to say this is something I’m quite proud of as it’s the way I always dreamed of doing things “effortless sexual attraction”. Looking back on the ups and down I realize that it looks a lot more chaotic than it felt. As far as the experience goes, this was one of the best I’ve had. It felt easy in just the right way. And it felt good. Cuz when it’s too easy, it doesn’t feel as good.

From first getting involved with this 4 years ago, and then moving on to coaching and putting on events in this community for the last 2 years now, I’ve had the opportunity to hang with a lot of other guys working on this stuff. And since working in the industry, I’ve had the opportunity to hang with a lot of dating coaches as well. And time and time again I see the same major fuck up happening over and over again between the two: Misunderstanding.

The misunderstanding that some how WE who are “good” have something other guys don’t. Like somehow we’re cut from a different cloth. Utter ridiculousness. The truth is, we don’t. And we’re not. We succeed, yes, but so do you. And we also fuck up/say the wrong thing/feel fear/whatever, just like you. What makes us good is simply this: we know what to do about it, and DO IT!

Get over the ego bro. Quit idolizing and worshiping. No one is absolutely perfect. Not even me

P/O

-Keen

Today I want to share an interesting article I just read about a new hot topic in psychology research called cognitive fluency. Check it…

Easy = True: How ‘cognitive fluency’ shapes what we believe, how we invest, and who will become a supermodel. By Drake Bennett. Reposted from here

Imagine that your stockbroker – or the friend who’s always giving you stock tips – called and told you he had come up with a new investment strategy. Price-to-earnings ratios, debt levels, management, competition, what the company makes, and how well it makes it, all those considerations go out the window. The new strategy is this: Invest in companies with names that are very easy to pronounce.

This would probably not strike you as a great idea. But, if recent research is to be believed, it might just be brilliant.
One of the hottest topics in psychology today is something called “cognitive fluency.” Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. On the face of it, it’s a rather intuitive idea. But psychologists are only beginning to uncover the surprising extent to which fluency guides our thinking, and in situations where we have no idea it is at work.

Psychologists have determined, for example, that shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names. Other studies have shown that when presenting people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process – even totally nonsubstantive changes like writing it in a cleaner font or making it rhyme or simply repeating it – can alter people’s judgment of the truth of the statement, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement’s author and their confidence in their own judgments and abilities. Similar manipulations can get subjects to be more forgiving, more adventurous, and more open about their personal shortcomings.

Because it shapes our thinking in so many ways, fluency is implicated in decisions about everything from the products we buy to the people we find attractive to the candidates we vote for – in short, in any situation where we weigh information. It’s a key part of the puzzle of how feelings like attraction and belief and suspicion work, and what researchers are learning about fluency has ramifications for anyone interested in eliciting those emotions.

“Every purchase you make, every interaction you have, every judgment you make can be put along a continuum from fluent to disfluent,” says Adam Alter, a psychologist at the New York University Stern School who co-wrote the paper on fluency and stock prices. “If you can understand how fluency influences judgment, you can understand many, many, many different kinds of judgments better than we do at the moment.”

A handful of scholars have already started to explore the ways that advertisers, educators, political campaigners, or anyone else in the business of persuasion can use these findings. And some of the implications are surprising. For example, to get people to think through a question, it may be best to present it less clearly. And to boost your self-confidence, you may want to set out to write a dauntingly long list of all the reasons why you’re a failure.

Our sensitivity to – and affinity for – fluency is an adaptive shortcut. According to psychologists, it helps us apportion limited mental resources in a world where lots of things clamor for our attention and we have to quickly figure out which are worth thinking about.

Most of the time, the shortcut works pretty well. If something feels notably easy to decipher, whether it’s a piece of text or the shape of an object or the particulars of a person’s face, there’s a good chance it’s because we’ve previously done the work of processing it, and that it’s something we’ve encountered before. Cognitive fluency signals familiarity – some psychologists argue that the eerie experience of déjà vu is simply when we’re fooled by the unexpected ease of taking in a piece of sensory information, and interpret that as a memory of having been there or seen it before.

An instinctive preference for the familiar made sense in the prehistoric environment in which our brains developed, psychologists hypothesize. Unfamiliar things – whether they were large woolly animals, plants we were thinking of eating, or fellow human beings – needed to be carefully evaluated to determine whether they were friend or foe. Familiar objects were those we’d already passed judgment on, so it made sense not to waste time and energy scrutinizing them.

According to Norbert Schwarz, a leading fluency researcher, the late psychologist Robert Zajonc used to explain the evolutionary logic behind this tendency succinctly. “He’d say, ‘If it is familiar, it has not eaten you yet.’ ”

“That gut feeling of familiarity determined by ease of processing is a very effective shorthand,” says Schwarz, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. “Having to sit down and analyze every time whether something is familiar would not be a good idea.”

Our bias for the familiar, however, can be triggered in settings where there’s little purpose to it. In the 1960s, Zajonc did a series of experiments that uncovered what he dubbed the “mere exposure” effect: He found that, with stimuli ranging from nonsense words to abstract geometric patterns to images of faces to Chinese ideographs (the test subjects, being non-Chinese speakers, didn’t know what the ideographs meant), all it took to get people to say they liked certain ones more than others was to present them multiple times.

More recent work suggests that people assign all sorts of specific characteristics to things that feel familiar. Like beauty. Psychologists have identified what they call the “beauty-in-averageness” effect – when asked to identify the most attractive example of something, people tend to choose the most prototypical option. For example, when asked to identify the most appealing of a group of human faces, people choose the one that is a composite of all the others. And it’s not just faces: Studies have found a similar tendency when people are asked to identify what makes for an attractive dog or car or watch. Some psychologists suggest that much of what we perceive as beauty is just the fact that the most prototypical faces and dogs and watches are the easiest to process, because they share the most with all the other faces and dogs and watches that we’ve seen and stored in our perceptual inventory.

“These faces fit right in there. In effect, you’ve already learned the facial features, so people like them,” says Piotr Winkielman, a psychologist at the University of California San Diego who has done research on fluency and attractiveness.

Winkielman doesn’t claim that beauty is entirely explained by fluency, but he argues that the effect is powerful, all the more so because we’re unaware of it. Indeed, the power of the effect, combined with the ease with which psychologists can fool people into mistaking the sensation of fluency for actual familiarity, helps explain the current popularity of research into the phenomenon.

“People are very sensitive to the experience of ease or difficulty, but very insensitive to where that feeling comes from,” says Schwarz.

One thing that fools us, for example, is font. When people read something in a difficult-to-read font, they unwittingly transfer that sense of difficulty onto the topic they’re reading about. Schwarz and his former student Hyunjin Song have found that when people read about an exercise regimen or a recipe in a less legible font, they tend to rate the exercise regimen more difficult and the recipe more complicated than if they read about them in a clearer font.

Playing with legibility can also change perceptions in subtler, less predictable ways. Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton University who also co-wrote the stocks and fluency paper, have found that when a personal questionnaire is presented in a less legible font, people tend to answer it less honestly than if it is written in a more legible one. Alter and two other psychologists, Simon Laham and Geoffrey Goodwin, also found that, when presenting people with written descriptions of moral transgressions, increasing the contrast between text and background to make it easier to read the description made people more forgiving.

To Alter, it’s a demonstration not so much of the power of fluency but of its opposite, what psychologists call “disfluency.” Even at the level of a trickier font, the experience of disfluency makes people wary and uncomfortable. That sensation, Alter argues, is enough to make them less forthcoming and also less forgiving in their moral judgments.

“Disfluency functions as a cognitive alarm,” Alter says. “It sets up a cognitive roadblock and makes people think, and it triggers a sense of risk and concern.”

It isn’t just visual cues that have this sort of effect. Matthew McGlone, a psychologist at the University of Texas, has found that auditory cues can shape people’s perception of truth. McGlone did a study in which he presented subjects with a series of unfamiliar aphorisms either in rhyming or nonrhyming form: “Woes unite foes,” for example, versus “Woes unite enemies.” He found that people tended to see the rhyming ones as more accurate than the nonrhyming ones, despite the fact that, substantively, the two were identical. Phrases that are easier on the ear aren’t just catchy and easy to remember, McGlone argues, they also feel inherently truer. He calls it “the rhyme-as-reason effect.”

The persuasive power of repetition, clarity, and simplicity is something that people who set out to win others’ trust – marketers, political candidates, speechwriters, suitors, and teachers – already have an intuitive sense of if they’re good at what they do. What the fluency research is showing is just how profound the effect can be, and just how it works.

And some of the more interesting ramifications of the new work come from the suggestion that disfluency, rather than fluency, can sometimes be what’s called for. Work on product marketing by Schwarz and Hyejeung Cho has found, for example, that while creating a sense of disfluency in potential consumers is likely to make them see a product as less familiar, it also makes them see it as more innovative.

And a few studies suggest that disfluency works well as a prompt to get people to think carefully and catch mistakes. Alter and Oppenheimer found that using a more difficult font can get students to do better on the Cognitive Reaction Test, a three-question test that usually trips up people answering intuitively. In another study, they found that disfluency also led people to think more abstractly. Schwarz and Song found that a difficult font can dramatically increase the number of people who correctly respond to the question, “How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?” (The answer is “none” – Moses wasn’t on the Ark.)

In other words, to get people to think carefully and to prevent them from making silly mistakes, make them work to process the question: make the font hard to read, the cadence awkward, and the wording unfamiliar.

Some researchers are also starting to look at the question of how to change people’s responses to cognitive fluency. Winkielman is part of a team of researchers who, in a forthcoming study, looked at the relationship between mood and the desire for fluency. They found that happy people are less interested in familiar, fluent stimuli – in this case abstract visual patterns – than sad people. According to Winkielman, this makes sense: When we’re unhappy, we seek out stability and a sense of safety; when we’re happy, we’re more open to the unfamiliar.

“Fluent things are familiar, but also boring and comfortable,” he says. “Disfluency is intriguing and novel. Sometimes you like comfort food, like when you’re sick. And usually you want to try something new when you’re more comfortable.”

It may be possible to tactically use disfluency to improve our own everyday lives, as well. Schwarz has found that the ease or difficulty of thinking something can sometimes neutralize the actual content of the thoughts themselves. Along with Lawrence Sanna of the University of North Carolina, Schwarz has looked at fluency and self-confidence. The two found that, if the goal was to boost college students’ confidence before an exam, getting them to list a few reasons why they were going to succeed was more effective than getting them to list many reasons. Because it was harder, the students who were asked to think of more ways to succeed were actually less confident, even though they ended up with longer lists.

And Schwarz and Sanna found a converse effect when they asked students to think of reasons they would not do well: Students asked to come up with a longer list of reasons they would fail reported feeling more confident than those asked for a shorter list. Indeed, they reported feeling as confident as the students who had been asked to come up with the short list of ways to succeed – by the authors’ calculation, thinking of 12 ways to fail had the same effect as thinking of three ways to succeed.

In unpublished research, Schwarz has found a similar effect with marital happiness: Couples asked to come up with a short list of good qualities about each other reported higher levels of marital happiness than the other couples in the study – but so did those couples asked to come up with a long list of each other’s bad qualities.

“Having to come up with many good things about your spouse is terrible, because it becomes difficult and then you think she’s obviously not that wonderful,” Schwarz says. “Coming up with a few bad things about your spouse, that’s bad because it’s not that hard. Having to come up with a lot of bad things, since it’s hard, it means she’s not that bad at all. The difficulty that you have tells you that there are not many such things.”

Results like these suggest that feeling good about yourself may in part be a matter of having a hard time feeling bad, and that confidence and even success might be triggered by interventions that do nothing but make failure seem the more intimidating possibility. The human brain, for all its power, is suspicious of difficulty, but perhaps we can learn to use that.