Here’s the dirty little secret of pickup artist training: it actually works (for both men and women), but it may well make you feel like shit about yourself. Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you just want the digits. But just in case you want to get laid and feel like a better person, you might be interested in the results of an academic study on the topic. A PhD student in Mainz, Germany, trained 17 men and 23 women in the pickup and flirtation arts — specifically, how to apply evolutionary psychology principles to the pickup scene, how to make body language work for you (lots of touching!), and how to combat anxiety. He then sent his students into the wild, with the men instructed to gather digits and the women instructed to gather drinks invitations. The before-and-after stats showed that men went, on average, from 1.07 phone numbers to 3.67 per hour, while women’s drink-invite average went from 1.65 to 3.1.

Naturally, the experience made them all feel better about their dating skills. In addition, the men said they felt more intelligent and attractive, and the women felt more intelligent and confident. (Intelligent? Really? Or do they mean superior?) So where’s the downside, you’re wondering. Well, the men said they felt selfish afterwards, and the women felt dishonest and less responsible.

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