Most of the "psychology tricks" you'll find online for making a man like you fall into one of two groups.
The first group is harmless but useless. Mirror his body language. Say his name more often. Touch your hair.
The second group is worse. Ignore him to make him chase. Give him backhanded compliments so he tries harder. Make him jealous. These can create a reaction, but it's the kind of reaction that sours quickly, and they rely on making him feel insecure.
This article is about neither. The four tricks below sound odd — a couple of them sound like they should do the opposite of what they do. But each one has at least some research behind it, each one is entirely honest, and each one works with the way people actually come to like each other rather than against it.
One word of caution before we start: psychology studies are often small, and not all of them replicate perfectly. Treat the research below as a good reason to try something, not as a guarantee.
Why odd tricks work at all
Liking someone isn't a logical decision. Nobody tots up a woman's good points and decides to like her. The feeling arrives first, and the reasons get filled in afterwards.
That's why small, unexpected things can matter so much. The mind is constantly reading signals — how someone makes you feel, what they seem to think of you, what happens when you're around them — and building a feeling out of them long before any conscious thought catches up. Change the signals slightly, and you change the feeling.
None of the four involves pretending to be someone you're not.
Trick 1: Ask him for a favour
This one sounds backwards. Surely the way to make someone like you is to do them a favour?
Not necessarily. There's an old observation, usually credited to Benjamin Franklin, that people tend to like someone more after they've done something for them, not before. Franklin described winning over a hostile rival by asking to borrow a rare book from him; the man lent it and, as Franklin told it, they became friends for life.
In 1969, psychologists Jon Jecker and David Landy put a version of this to the test. Participants who'd won money in an experiment were later asked by the researcher to give it back as a personal favour to him. Those who did ended up rating him more likeable than those who weren't asked. It was a small study and later results have been mixed, but the idea stuck as the Ben Franklin effect.
One explanation is simple. When we do something for someone, part of us needs a reason why — and because I like them is the most comfortable one.
How to use it
Keep it small, specific and easy. You're not asking him to help you move house on a first date. You're asking for something that takes him a minute and plays to something he knows.
"You know about coffee — what should I order here?"
"Could you hold this while I find my keys? Thank you, lifesaver."
Then, crucially, let him see that it helped. A favour that disappears into thin air does very little. A favour that got a real smile and a "that was perfect" is one he'll remember doing.
Trick 2: Let him see you slip
Most of us spend the early stages of liking someone trying very hard to look flawless. It may be the wrong strategy.
In a well-known 1966 study, the psychologist Elliot Aronson and his colleagues played people a recording of someone taking part in a quiz. In some versions, the contestant was highly capable and answered almost everything right. In others, he was average. And in some versions, near the end, he clumsily spilled a cup of coffee over himself.
The capable contestant who spilled his coffee was rated more likeable than the capable one who didn't. The small blunder made him seem human, approachable, less intimidating. (The average contestant who spilled his coffee, sadly, was rated less likeable — the effect only seemed to help people who already came across as competent.) It's become known as the pratfall effect.
How to use it
This isn't about faking clumsiness. It's about not hiding the small, human mistakes you'd normally cover up — and being relaxed about them when they happen.
Get the name of the restaurant wrong, and laugh about it. Admit you've got no sense of direction. Say "I'm hopeless at this bit" when you are.
Done with humour, these moments make it easy for him to be around you. A man who's slightly in awe of a woman often keeps a polite distance. A man who's just watched her laugh at herself feels he's allowed to come closer.
Put the first two tricks side by side and you'll see something they share. Both give him a way in. The favour gives him something to do for you. The slip shows him you're not so perfectly self-contained that there's no room for him. In different ways, both let him feel that he has a place — that he's useful, needed, welcome.
That turns out to matter to men far more than they usually let on. A man rarely says he wants to feel needed by a woman. But when he senses there's nothing he could offer her, his interest tends to cool — quietly, and often without him understanding why.
Both tricks brush against a craving that men almost never put into words, and a free presentation is dedicated to it: the hidden want behind so much of what draws men in, why a man can't simply ask a woman to satisfy it, and why feeling surplus to a woman's life does more damage to his interest than almost anything else.
See the craving behind these tricks →
Trick 3: Leave a question mark
This is the one that sounds most like a game, so it's worth being careful.
In 2011, researchers Erin Whitchurch, Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert showed a group of women the profiles of men who'd supposedly looked at their own profiles. Some women were told the men had rated them highly. Some were told the men had rated them about average. And some were told it wasn't clear which — the men might like them a lot, or only a bit.
The women who didn't know turned out to be the most attracted of all. They also reported thinking about the men more. The researchers' explanation was that uncertainty keeps a person on your mind: when we can't be sure how someone feels, we keep coming back to the question.
It's one study, the participants were women rather than men, and it looked at a very early stage — strangers rather than people who'd met. So hold it lightly. But it fits with something many women notice: that the man who knows exactly how she feels from the first day often stops wondering about her at all.
How to use it
This is not about being hot and cold, or pretending not to care. Blowing warm and freezing by turns is exhausting and tends to drive good men off.
It's simply about not declaring everything at once. Be warm, be clearly interested — and let the full extent of your feelings unfold at a natural pace, rather than laying it out in the first week.
In practice, that might mean enjoying a date and saying so, without adding that you've already told your friends about him. It might mean replying warmly to his message without replying to it instantly every time. It might mean leaving a date while it's still going well, rather than staying until the last possible minute.
Warm and interested, but not a foregone conclusion. That small question mark keeps him thinking.
Trick 4: Let your good opinion grow
The last trick is the strangest of all, because it suggests that a woman who likes a man a lot from the start may win him less than one whose regard builds.
In 1965, Elliot Aronson and Darwyn Linder ran an experiment in which people overheard a series of comments about themselves made by someone they'd been working with. For some people, the comments were positive throughout. For others, they started out lukewarm and gradually became positive.
You might expect the always-positive person to be liked most. But the people whose opinion grew were liked more. The researchers' explanation was that praise feels most meaningful when it seems to have been won — when it's clearly a reaction to something, rather than a default. It's often called the gain effect.
It fits closely with how many men experience admiration. Praise that's handed out freely, from the first minute, is pleasant but easy to dismiss. Admiration that seems to have grown out of something he actually did feels real — and it's the kind a man holds on to.
How to use it
Don't open with gushing. Resist the urge to tell him on the first date that he's amazing, funny and gorgeous. You don't know yet, and he knows you don't.
Instead, let your admiration follow what he does. When he handles something well in front of you, let your face show it. When he tells you about something he achieved, react to that thing specifically. And now and then, bring something up again days later — "I was thinking about what you said about your dad's business. That took real guts." A compliment that arrives after a delay tells him it wasn't reflexive. You thought about it.
Over time, he should be able to feel your opinion of him rising — and to feel that he had something to do with it.
The two-week experiment
Here's the worksheet. Don't try all four at once; that's how tricks turn into performances.
Take a sheet of paper and make four rows, one for each trick. Under each, write down one small, specific thing you could do in the next fortnight:
The favour. One small ask, in an area he knows about.
The slip. One small imperfection you'll stop hiding.
The question mark. One place you'll let things unfold rather than declaring them.
The growing regard. One specific thing he's done that you'll admire, and one compliment you'll save for a few days later.
Then, over the next two weeks, try one row at a time. After each, jot down what happened next. Did he seem more at ease? Did he get in touch sooner? Did he bring up the thing you'd admired?
Most women find that one or two of the four feel completely natural and one feels forced. Keep the natural ones. They're the ones that will come across as you.
What all four have in common
Look back across the four tricks and a pattern appears.
None of them works by telling a man you like him. The favour lets him feel useful. The slip lets him feel at ease. The question mark keeps him wondering. The growing regard lets him feel he's earning something. In each case, the signal arrives without being spelt out, and it lands precisely because he's worked it out for himself.
That's especially true of admiration. A man can't ask a woman to admire him, and he wouldn't believe her if she did it on request. It has to be picked up in the way she looks at him, the questions she asks, the things she comes to him for — and it has to feel earned.
That wordless side of admiration is where the presentation lingers longest — the signals a man reads without being told, why praise only registers once he believes he's won it, and how feeling needed can quietly turn casual interest into something much stronger.
Learn what he's quietly reading →
Some honest limits.
None of these tricks can make a man like you if the basic attraction isn't there. At best, they remove obstacles and help existing interest grow. If you try all four and he stays lukewarm, that isn't a failure of technique — it's his answer, and it's worth hearing.
Don't worry about getting them exactly right, either. Most of their power comes from small, sincere moments repeated over weeks, not from any one perfectly executed move.
They're also meant to be honest. Ask for favours you actually want, admit mistakes you actually made, and admire things you actually admire. The moment a trick becomes a deliberate act, it tends to show, and it stops working. If you're not sure whether something counts as honest, ask yourself whether you'd be comfortable with him knowing exactly why you did it. If the answer's yes, go ahead.
And if a man responds to your openness with scorn — mocks your slip, makes you feel stupid for asking, or plays on your uncertainty to keep you anxious — stop. Tricks like these are for letting a decent man get closer, not for winning over one who makes you feel small or unsafe.
Otherwise: make your two-week sheet tonight. Ask one small favour. Let one small slip show. And the next time he does something impressive, say so — then bring it up again next week.
If you want the non-verbal side of attraction: How to Make Him Like You: 5 Non-Verbal Signals Men Can't Ignore. And for when most of it's happening on your phone: How to Make Him Like You Over Text: 4 Flirting Mistakes to Stop Making.