I don’t think making a move in an elevator is an expression of confidence. I haven’t read a specific analysis of the situation from a PUA guy but I would expect them to advice against that behavior.
I think tabooing “confidence” would end up being revealing here. I suspect yours, confidence-1, would read something like “not signalling anxiety or nervousness”, whereas I’m talking about confidence-2, the anticipated probability of success, which informs the expected value of an approach.
I accept responsibility for the miscommunication. In my initial post I talked about PUAs advocating “confidence”, and equated that to confidence-2. You and others have pointed out that actually some or all of the advocacy is for confidence-1, which I didn’t at first appreciate. I haven’t read all that much PUA stuff, so I’ll accept what you’ve said and leave it at that.
Anticipating success in an approach in no way implies that it’s a good idea to constrain another person to reject you.
If a girl thinks that she only gave you her phone number because you coerced her to give it to you, why should she answer the phone when you call and look forward to going on a date with you?
The way people backwards rationalize their behavior matters a lot.
I think tabooing “confidence” would end up being revealing here. I suspect yours, confidence-1, would read something like “not signalling anxiety or nervousness”, whereas I’m talking about confidence-2, the anticipated probability of success, which informs the expected value of an approach.
I accept responsibility for the miscommunication. In my initial post I talked about PUAs advocating “confidence”, and equated that to confidence-2. You and others have pointed out that actually some or all of the advocacy is for confidence-1, which I didn’t at first appreciate. I haven’t read all that much PUA stuff, so I’ll accept what you’ve said and leave it at that.
Anticipating success in an approach in no way implies that it’s a good idea to constrain another person to reject you.
If a girl thinks that she only gave you her phone number because you coerced her to give it to you, why should she answer the phone when you call and look forward to going on a date with you?
The way people backwards rationalize their behavior matters a lot.