What Is a Fun Psychological Trick To Try on Someone?

Look people in the eye when you pass them in the street.

I read about this fun little game in The 4-Hour Workweek as an exercise to build confidence.

Here’s how it works:

Establish eye contact with people as you’re about to cross paths.
Hold it as long as you can.

This achieves two things:

You’ll look more confident to others. “Whoa! I’m getting noticed! Why does he/she look at me? What black magic is this?”
You’ll become more confident the longer you play, for one simple reason: 99.9% of people will look away first.

I sometimes play this for 10, 15 minutes at a time and not a single person “wins” a round against me – by the time we pass by they look away. It’s a great way to make you feel really good about yourself, really fast.

Trust me, this is hilarious. Especially when you look at people like this:

PS: This depends a lot on the country and city you’re in, but don’t play it where it might get you into trouble.

Nik

Niklas Göke writes for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. A self-taught writer with more than a decade of experience, Nik has published over 2,000 articles. His work has attracted tens of millions of readers and been featured in places like Business Insider, CNBC, Lifehacker, and many others. Nik has self-published 2 books thus far, most recently 2-Minute Pep Talks. Outside of his day job and daily blog, Nik loves reading, video games, and pizza, which he eats plenty a slice of in Munich, Germany, where he resides.