If that’s how you actually say it, I’d be a little concerned about how you were coming across. “Let’s exchange our phone numbers” doesn’t lend itself to a polite “no” in the same way as, say, “Do you want to exchange phone numbers?”
If that’s how you actually say it, I’d be a little concerned about how you were coming across.
Replace Viliam_Bur with a pretty girl. Are you still concerned about how she’s coming across? What if it’s two people of the same gender? What if one of them is secretly attracted to the other but pretends to be a friend, yet the other knows about said supposedly secret attraction?
I think you were assuming a certain context and tone and approach that have been more closely associated with that phrasing in your personal experience, perhaps without realizing it.
Good point. I checked by visualising a selection of people in my head asking this, male and female, with various characteristics. I had the same reaction to about equal numbers of men and women. Usually some something along the lines of “erm, can we add each other on facebook first?”
...Then again, I’m probably just particularly not-keen on giving people my phone number, and as such was reading the situation exclusively in terms of “which way of asking makes the certainty of me saying “no” less awkward?”
I think you were assuming a certain context and tone and approach that have been more closely associated with that phrasing in your personal experience, perhaps without realizing it.
Yes, but I guess the OP also had that kind of situation in mind.
Since we’re talking about impressions and pressures to say yes and the like, I prefer something like “I’d like to exchange numbers. Would that be all right?” This lets you take most of the risk in the interaction and makes your intentions clearer, while the “Do you want...” version asks the other person to express their preferences first and only implies your own.
And going one step further, it’s not about getting a phone number (or shouldn’t be). It’s about keeping the conversation going. So: “I’d like to keep this conversation going / talking with you / talking about this. How does that sound to you?” and if you get a positive response, then “Let’s exchange numbers” or “how can I find you on Facebook” is perfectly natural.
That’s not dark-artsy. It contextualizes your personal request as a personal request, thereby making it acceptable to refuse. Sort of the opposite, really.
It’s a lot like introducing an idea you have for working with someone as ‘a [potentially] unreasonable request’ - by saying it, you’re almost explicitly giving them permission to say ‘no’ to whatever comes next, and if they think it was perfectly reasonable then they go along and all you spent was 4 words.
It doesn’t -sound- dark artsy, and it doesn’t -feel- manipulative to the person on the other end, but the apparent significant of the leading question diffuses the relatively low significance of the second question. The question of why you asked for the phone number in this manner distracts them from the question of whether or not they really wanted to give it to you. (This only applies while it is an unorthodox approach, mind.)
That’s where the dark arts come in.
I recommend it anyways because, as you say, it gives them a comfortable way of saying no.
I think that hardly anyone is going to be so confused by the framing that they don’t think about the object level question, especially since the object level question is most often a gut matter where most of the difficulty arises from reading yourself, not generating the judgement itself. Taking the pressure off makes it all easier.
It’s a marginal effect, not a primary one; you couldn’t get a phone number out of somebody who doesn’t like you, but you might get one out of somebody who is near the threshold. Other effects from framing the question (such as signaling that you respect their right to say no, and therefore will respect it if they later decide they’d rather not be called by you) this way probably dominate the impact; but as somebody who grew up around manipulation, and have a natural and despised tendency towards it, manipulation is something I am rather paranoid about, and avoid as much as reasonably possible.
It won’t get me in trouble for manipulating. But you misestimate what’s going on: Such a strategy isn’t manipulation-minimizing. In fact it depends on some (positive) manipulation, trying to frame the question in a way that makes the other person more comfortable saying no. There’s also some negative manipulation going on, however, in that the framing -also- makes the other person less likely to say no, even if it is just at the marginal cases.
Effective manipulation doesn’t rely on changing another person’s thought processes, it relies on subverting them. Don’t make them into a person who will do X, be the person they would do X for/to.
They can still say, “I don’t have my phone with me at the moment.” ;-)
(And as I mentioned elsethread, these days I only ever ask for phone numbers in situations where I can be reasonably sure that they are OK with giving me theirs.)
They can still say, “I don’t have my phone with me at the moment.” ;-)
Only better in the unlikely event that the other party will take it at face value and believe them; and that the other party hasn’t previously caught a glimpse of their phone at any point.
I find it very puzzling how people can get used to so much lying and casual disrespect for each other’s intelligence. I’m looking at it from the “privileged” viewpoint of someone who never entered the world of dating or sex, nor would’ve had much to offer in it, and thus didn’t bear its costs, but I expect a lot of people to consider the very fact that you feel the need to give someone a fake phone number, as opposed to simply refusing, or to pretend you don’t have your phone with you, a gigantic red flag and a sign that there are an awful lot of much better things you could be doing than being in that place interacting with that person.
Measly pieces of knowledge I’ve gathered so far:
The man probably just wants to get into the woman’s pants and to show and defend his masculinity and his status. He needs to look tough, and hence can’t let his lack of mutual trust with the woman visibly bother him; that’s why he doesn’t appear to think twice if given the chance before inserting a pretty vulnerable part of his body into an orifice whose unenthusiastic owner could’ve set up any number of nasty surprises in the way. This also probably implies he can’t afford to respect the woman very much.
The woman..., well, I have no idea what she wants in the first place. If asked, she’ll probably say she just wants to have a good time, making a point to look down on all those sex-starved men who fall dismally short of her standards, as if they don’t know there’s more to life than sex. Of course, her own sexual drive is not contemptible at all, and neither is that of the men she does find attractive. She obviously has no respect for the man she’s interacting with. She might fear him, and—unlike in a man—this fear may be high-status, since it signals her desirability and her ability to summon allies eager to mop the floor with any lowlife who distresses her.
I read the great-great-grandparent as giving your number so the other person can ring you at any time if they so wish, not as pressuring them to ring you immediately. I think this removes any incentive to give you a fake number, unless, of course, the other person wants to mess with you by getting you to call someone you really, really don’t want to call—perhaps to get back at you for wasting their time with a long interaction they didn’t dare stop?
I’m definitely not the first person in history with these thoughts, so it’s extremely likely that measures have been taken all the time to enable people to get to know one another without so many barriers to honest communication. Access to such an environment is itself a privilege, of course; therefore, if you’re not desirable enough, any difficulty to get into those environments, or even to learn they exist, is a feature, not a bug.
In a situation like this I usually say something like “let’s exchange our phone numbers”.
If that’s how you actually say it, I’d be a little concerned about how you were coming across. “Let’s exchange our phone numbers” doesn’t lend itself to a polite “no” in the same way as, say, “Do you want to exchange phone numbers?”
Replace Viliam_Bur with a pretty girl. Are you still concerned about how she’s coming across? What if it’s two people of the same gender? What if one of them is secretly attracted to the other but pretends to be a friend, yet the other knows about said supposedly secret attraction?
I think you were assuming a certain context and tone and approach that have been more closely associated with that phrasing in your personal experience, perhaps without realizing it.
Good point. I checked by visualising a selection of people in my head asking this, male and female, with various characteristics. I had the same reaction to about equal numbers of men and women. Usually some something along the lines of “erm, can we add each other on facebook first?”
...Then again, I’m probably just particularly not-keen on giving people my phone number, and as such was reading the situation exclusively in terms of “which way of asking makes the certainty of me saying “no” less awkward?”
Yes, but I guess the OP also had that kind of situation in mind.
Since we’re talking about impressions and pressures to say yes and the like, I prefer something like “I’d like to exchange numbers. Would that be all right?” This lets you take most of the risk in the interaction and makes your intentions clearer, while the “Do you want...” version asks the other person to express their preferences first and only implies your own.
And going one step further, it’s not about getting a phone number (or shouldn’t be). It’s about keeping the conversation going. So: “I’d like to keep this conversation going / talking with you / talking about this. How does that sound to you?” and if you get a positive response, then “Let’s exchange numbers” or “how can I find you on Facebook” is perfectly natural.
Your requests are -too- reasonable. They would make many people feel unreasonable for saying no.
Make people feel comfortable telling you no. For example, by asking first:
“May I ask you a rather personal question?”
Plus, it’s amusing. And doubly so if you freely volunteer the reason -why- you asked that question first.
A little dark-artsy, mind, but most of social interactions involve a little bit of that anyways.
That’s not dark-artsy. It contextualizes your personal request as a personal request, thereby making it acceptable to refuse. Sort of the opposite, really.
It’s a lot like introducing an idea you have for working with someone as ‘a [potentially] unreasonable request’ - by saying it, you’re almost explicitly giving them permission to say ‘no’ to whatever comes next, and if they think it was perfectly reasonable then they go along and all you spent was 4 words.
It doesn’t -sound- dark artsy, and it doesn’t -feel- manipulative to the person on the other end, but the apparent significant of the leading question diffuses the relatively low significance of the second question. The question of why you asked for the phone number in this manner distracts them from the question of whether or not they really wanted to give it to you. (This only applies while it is an unorthodox approach, mind.)
That’s where the dark arts come in.
I recommend it anyways because, as you say, it gives them a comfortable way of saying no.
I think that hardly anyone is going to be so confused by the framing that they don’t think about the object level question, especially since the object level question is most often a gut matter where most of the difficulty arises from reading yourself, not generating the judgement itself. Taking the pressure off makes it all easier.
It’s a marginal effect, not a primary one; you couldn’t get a phone number out of somebody who doesn’t like you, but you might get one out of somebody who is near the threshold. Other effects from framing the question (such as signaling that you respect their right to say no, and therefore will respect it if they later decide they’d rather not be called by you) this way probably dominate the impact; but as somebody who grew up around manipulation, and have a natural and despised tendency towards it, manipulation is something I am rather paranoid about, and avoid as much as reasonably possible.
But… this is the opposite of manipulation. How does making every effort to minimize manipulation get you in trouble for manipulating?
It won’t get me in trouble for manipulating. But you misestimate what’s going on: Such a strategy isn’t manipulation-minimizing. In fact it depends on some (positive) manipulation, trying to frame the question in a way that makes the other person more comfortable saying no. There’s also some negative manipulation going on, however, in that the framing -also- makes the other person less likely to say no, even if it is just at the marginal cases.
Effective manipulation doesn’t rely on changing another person’s thought processes, it relies on subverting them. Don’t make them into a person who will do X, be the person they would do X for/to.
Your definition of manipulation is so broad I think it loses all relevant meaning. Framing a question is a matter of clear communication.
I think the tone of voice is as important as the actual wording used.
Or “here’s my phone number, if you ring me I’ll save yours”.
Bad idea; that carries the subtext of “I won’t let you get away with giving me a fake number”. (See for example comment thread 17 here.)
They can still say, “I don’t have my phone with me at the moment.” ;-)
(And as I mentioned elsethread, these days I only ever ask for phone numbers in situations where I can be reasonably sure that they are OK with giving me theirs.)
Only better in the unlikely event that the other party will take it at face value and believe them; and that the other party hasn’t previously caught a glimpse of their phone at any point.
I find it very puzzling how people can get used to so much lying and casual disrespect for each other’s intelligence. I’m looking at it from the “privileged” viewpoint of someone who never entered the world of dating or sex, nor would’ve had much to offer in it, and thus didn’t bear its costs, but I expect a lot of people to consider the very fact that you feel the need to give someone a fake phone number, as opposed to simply refusing, or to pretend you don’t have your phone with you, a gigantic red flag and a sign that there are an awful lot of much better things you could be doing than being in that place interacting with that person.
Measly pieces of knowledge I’ve gathered so far:
The man probably just wants to get into the woman’s pants and to show and defend his masculinity and his status. He needs to look tough, and hence can’t let his lack of mutual trust with the woman visibly bother him; that’s why he doesn’t appear to think twice if given the chance before inserting a pretty vulnerable part of his body into an orifice whose unenthusiastic owner could’ve set up any number of nasty surprises in the way. This also probably implies he can’t afford to respect the woman very much.
The woman..., well, I have no idea what she wants in the first place. If asked, she’ll probably say she just wants to have a good time, making a point to look down on all those sex-starved men who fall dismally short of her standards, as if they don’t know there’s more to life than sex. Of course, her own sexual drive is not contemptible at all, and neither is that of the men she does find attractive. She obviously has no respect for the man she’s interacting with. She might fear him, and—unlike in a man—this fear may be high-status, since it signals her desirability and her ability to summon allies eager to mop the floor with any lowlife who distresses her.
I read the great-great-grandparent as giving your number so the other person can ring you at any time if they so wish, not as pressuring them to ring you immediately. I think this removes any incentive to give you a fake number, unless, of course, the other person wants to mess with you by getting you to call someone you really, really don’t want to call—perhaps to get back at you for wasting their time with a long interaction they didn’t dare stop?
I’m definitely not the first person in history with these thoughts, so it’s extremely likely that measures have been taken all the time to enable people to get to know one another without so many barriers to honest communication. Access to such an environment is itself a privilege, of course; therefore, if you’re not desirable enough, any difficulty to get into those environments, or even to learn they exist, is a feature, not a bug.