One point that appears to be universally agreed upon when it comes to seduction is that a certain degree of confidence is required in order to meet and get to know strangers.

However, there does not seem to be consensus on how much confidence one should have, to be an effective seducer. Many people suggest that confidence is everything, and therefore one should not simply be confident, but one should actually be cocky. Others would suggest that just enough confidence is needed to put oneself in a situation where strategies and tactics can take over. Corporate Seductionists would no doubt claim that you need an actor’s ability to conceal his or her nervousness, since they want to sell scripts, that they claim will help you meet the person of your dreams.

If we are to carry out any sort of investigation, we are immediately presented with a number of problems, for example, when a person suffering from low self-esteem says they feel confident, there is a good chance that this level of confidence is different from when a professional skydiver says that they feel confident. Then, there is the Nature vs. Nurture issue: Can people change from shy to confident (or vice-versa) and if so, are people generally born shy and learn to have confidence, or do people that are confident from birth learn to be shy?

Evolutionary theorists claim that in the Animal kingdom, males are “aggressive sexual advertisers”, whilst females are more sexually discerning. This suggests that males would be very confident, whilst females would tend to be be shy. However, media reports often complain about “Ladette” culture, claiming that modern women are sexually aggressive, which contrasts strongly with the Evolutionary theory approach. Moreover, it has latterly been proposed that men are genetically shy, although the evidence to support this theory has not been forthcoming. Additionally, English language experts have reported fears that nursery rhymes will be lost in the future, apparently because modern media-influenced parents are too self-conscious to sing to their children. If there is any truth to this story, then it would suggest that both men and women in general become less confident over time.

Now, although we cannot answer all these questions directly, we do know that shyness and confidence represent polar ends of a continuum, and thus we can ask about changes over time, if we make the assumption that the skill level of a seducer correlates with relative efficacy of that seducer; we will be able to examine changes over time between a seducer’s self-reported confidence levels, and then compare these changes (or lack thereof) with randomness. - All supposing that we can gather a large enough data set.

Seduction Labs, as a non-commercial, non-partisan seduction focused website was ideally placed to study this phenomenon, since it does not encourage idolization, does not specifically advocate any particular seduction panjandrum’s methodology, and is not affiliated with any of the seduction boys clubs. The readership demographic should therefore consist of a more balanced cross section of people having an interest in seduction.

Regular readers will have noticed that there has been a survey at the top of the website for the past few months, which you’ve been encouraged to participate in (If you took the time to take part, then thank you very much for your help).

At the date of writing this article, there were a total of 483 respondents, 17 of which claimed not to be interested in seduction and 14 more who were unable to find an option listed which adequately described their situation, these groups were immediately eliminated because we are interested in studying Seducers; although the low total percentage of results removed suggests that most people were at least reasonably satisfied that the options supplied in the survey somewhat described their position. Next, 10 people described themselves as Gay, Lesbian or Transgender Seductionists, a figure that was deemed to be somewhat lower than current reported estimates of the gay population. Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Seductionists were therefore thought to have been underrepresented in the sample; this however could be simply due to the demographic of people visiting the website, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people choosing not to take part or possibly selecting the ‘none of the above’ option (if they were unhappy to be labelled in this way); this group was also were eliminated, leaving a total of 442 participants. Here is a summary table of the results:

This breaks down as follows:

22.6% of participants are female
77.3% of participants are male

36.6% of participants are more skilled
63.3% of participants are less skilled

48.0% of participants are confident at present
52.1% of participants are shy at present

27.0% of participants were confident in the past
73.1% of participants were shy in the past

Since these statistics are all unconnected, they say more about the readership of the Seduction Labs website than anything about shyness or confidence. It was therefore necessary to conduct a more detailed analysis of the results. For this, chi-squared analysis was used.

Looking at the numbers using chi-squared analysis, we see χ²=35.83 (9, p<0.00004) of which the largest contributors were:

F(m),C->C - 19 observed vs. 8.67 expected
M(m),C->S - 20 observed vs. 11.73 expected
M(l),S->S - 116 observed vs. 96.35 expected
F(m),S->S - 14 observed vs. 22.24 expected
M(m),S->S - 31 observed vs. 44.47 expected
M(l),C->C - 27 observed vs. 37.59 expected
M(l),C->S - 18 observed vs. 25.41 expected

This tells us that relative to the other categories, there were higher than expected numbers of experienced, consistently confident female seducers in the sample. Further, there was also a higher than expected number of experienced male seducers who had been confident in the past, but who are now shy, as well as higher than expected numbers of less experienced males who had remained consistently shy.

Meanwhile, there were lower than expected numbers of experienced female seducers, who had consistently remained shy, and lower than expected numbers of experienced male seducers who had consistently remained shy as well as lower than expected numbers of consistently confident but less experienced males, and lower than expected numbers of less experienced males, who had gone from confident to shy.

Of course, these findings could be skewed by the fact that we are comparing men and women together, when it’s quite likely that men and women would use different seduction techniques. In order to look for significance more closely in the numbers, we need to split it in to male and female data.

Looking at female seducers first, the lower numbers of female participants meant that χ²=6.78 (3, p<0.079) which was almost statistically significant, but not quite. Although it might be worth noting that the largest contributors to chi-squared were F(l)C->C and F(m)C->C, however a larger sample would be needed to confirm any inference.

Turning to male seducers, χ²=17.30 (3, p<0.001) which was statistically significant. Here the largest contributors to chi-squared were M(m)S->S (31 observed vs. 46.42 expected) and M(m)C->S (20 observed vs. 12.00 expected), indicating that more experienced seducers have a tendency to have been less consistently shy, or started confident and later became more shy.

Next, in order to examine the data at a higher level of sophistication, the figures were broken down further, this time into a number of 2 X 2 contingency tables. These were to compare less experienced females, more experienced females, less experienced males and more experienced males. Here, only the table for less experienced males was statistically significant χ²=6.85 (1, p<0.009) and, the largest contributors here were C->C (27 observed vs. 19.23 expected) and C->S (18 observed vs. 25.77 expected), indicating that less experienced seducers have a tendency to be more consistently confident, or less likely to transition from being confident to becoming shyer.

So, what does this tell us?

Most obviously, the results do show that men and women have different levels of confidence, based on the degree of seduction experience that they have attained.

For females, the results are not completely clear, although the indications seem to be that less experienced women tend to start confidently, and remain confident as they gain experience; there is also the fact that lower than expected numbers of shy women were found in the survey. This effect may be because many magazines aimed at women often feature articles about how to seduce men (although it will often be termed differently in the article). And, as seducers, females are usually more passive, relying on beauty, fashion and attraction to lure a man, and then subsequently making an accept/reject decision, based on his overtures towards her. At this level, relative confidence levels would not need to be especially high.

The typical comment given by women, when asked, will be “It’s a man’s job to approach a woman”. Although if media reports are correct, post feminism, some women might be prepared to be more sexually aggressive, and possibly be prepared to approach a man with a view to seduction; although I would expect this to be less common than the previously mentioned attraction strategy. However, it should be noted that further data would be needed in order to confirm or refute this hypothesis.

For males, the larger sample size means that the results are more statistically significant. Here, it would seem that less experienced males initially adopt one of two strategies; the major strategy being to start confident and stay confident, with the minor strategy being to start confidently, and become less confident over time.

This finding counters any idea that all males start out as either shy or confident individuals, who then converge to some optimal confidence level; and makes sense since publicly available novice seduction information stereotypically tends to follow the Evolutionary psychology model, which suggests that males only need to have confidence in order to improve their seduction success.

We are however more interested in the transition between less experience and more experience. So, examining more experienced seducers, the general tendency is to not remain consistently shy, or to move from confidence to shyness, which would tend to suggest that confident, less-experienced male seducers often have a penchant to be over-confident, and thus gaining experience helps them to adjust their attitude over time.

This may possibly suggest that inexperienced over-confident individuals have a tendency to rush into situations where they were unprepared, thereby ending up looking slightly foolish. Or, they may choose inopportune times to come up to women, and as a result find that they are interrupting important conversations; or fail to observe a nearby partner who might interpret the interruption as a hostile act. Alternatively, signs of over-confidence could simply be being interpreted as arrogance, by the women they were meeting.

Unfortunately, since we cannot establish a baseline confidence/shyness level, this study is unable to reveal whether confident male seducers generally become anywhere near as shy as male seducers who stayed shy after gaining experience, or whether confident male seducers become only slightly less confident, while consistently shy, but experienced, males retain a markedly lower level of confidence. It may be that persistently shy males avoid more stressful situations that more confident individuals would relish, and instead opt for personal ads, phone dating or internet based solutions, which may not require especially high levels of confidence, although this scenario seems rather unlikely.

The concluding remarks must therefore be that in order to be an effective seducer, one does not need to have extraordinarily high levels of confidence, further, very high levels of confidence seem not to be a good trait. It would therefore seem that organisations or people solely advocating that seducers become more confident are misleading their clients.

In conclusion, it seems that a small increase in confidence is necessary for some less experienced males, whilst inexperienced males who already feel very confident, would be better advised to consider tempering their confidence levels, in order to become more effective seducers.

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Posted by Jonathan in Analysis, Psychology