Vanessa Van Edwards - Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People

Me, circa 1993

As you can see, I went for helmet hair without actually playing a sport requiring a helmetor any sport, franklywhile clinging to the belief that nothing complements a baggy T-shirt quite like a sharp vest. A plaid one, though truthfully I wasnt too picky in the vest department.

On particularly socially anxious days, I would break out in hives right before walking into school and wear long sleeves and pants to cover my swollen, red, itchy limbs. As you might have guessed, the rashes covering my face and scalp didnt help my popularity rankings.

It wasnt all bad, though. On Valentines Day, my teachers gave me cards.

Its an understatement to say that people skills did not come naturally to me. I had to learn them the hard way, so I could teach them to you the easy way. Heres how it happened: Early on, I figured out that I could learn human behavior just like I studied for math or foreign language tests. I made facial expression flash cards, looked for small-talk patterns, and tried to spot the hidden emotions of my teachersalthough that last one sometimes got me into trouble!

I read everything I could get my hands on about peoplepsychology textbooks, sociological studies, and every human behavior book ever written. Eventually, I began to create my own tests and experiments. For one mini-experiment, I created flash cards of conversation starters based on studies of dopamine, carried them in my purse, tried them on strangers, and then catalogued their reactions. For another, I tried to adopt the alpha body language moves of chimps to see if people would mirror me (that one did NOT work). In yet another, I used persuasion techniques in a business pitch competition to see if I could game the system.

On a whim, I decided to document all of my misadventures and takeaways as a human guinea pig on a blog, ScienceofPeople.com. To my surprise and delight, I found I wasnt the only person struggling to get along with people. As our articles started to pop up all over the web and our videos began going viral, we caught the attention of media outlets like NPR, Inc., and Forbes, which covered our unique approach. This is when I decided to do larger research experiments and turn Science of People into a human behavior lab.

In our lab, we start every endeavor by finding the latest scientific studies and then turn them into real-life experiments and tactics. We then share these strategies with our readers and students to test them. In this way, each skill in this book has already been refined by thousands of students who have used them in real-life situations and reported their results back to us to perfect.

This method is our secret sauce:

Step One: Find fascinating research.

Step Two: Create actionable real-life strategies.

Step Three: Test, tweak, and perfect.

Repeat.

I call our approach behavior hacking. Over the last eight years, I have developed shortcuts, formulas, and blueprints for getting along with anyone. Our unique approach has reached millions of students through our online courses and in-person workshops. Ive helped corporate teams at Fortune 500 companies increase their interpersonal intelligence, singles make connections at speed-dating workshops, and entrepreneurs win pitch competitions using science-based behavior hacks. My columns and appearances in the Huffington Post, in Forbes, and on CNN are seen all over the world by people who want to improve their relationships.

We have streamlined all of our best findings into a universal framework that makes up this book. Each chapter of Captivate will teach you one of the fourteen behavior hacks. These are simple, powerful tools that you can use to level up your career, improve your relationships, and increase your income.

This book will teach you how people work. If you know exactly what makes people tick, you can optimize your behavior, interactions, and relationships. Trying to get along with people without a framework is a bit like solving complex math problems without any equations. Its both difficult and involves a heck of a lot of unnecessary suffering along the way. This book will give you the people skills you never learned in school.

As diverse as we all seem on the outside, our inner workings are quite similarif not eerily predictable. There are hidden rules to human behavior. We just have to find where to look.

Part I is all about helping you master the first five minutes of any interactionstarting a conversation and creating instant likability. First impressions are fundamental to everything else I can teach you.

In Part II, I will teach you skills that will help you get to know someone better in the first five hours of any interaction. My system for speed-reading people and decoding behavior will help you whether you are on the first five dates or in the first five meetings. I call this system the matrixit doesnt involve Keanu Reeves, but its just as cool. This is what happens when you want to level up a casual connection to something deeper.