Negging

Negging is a PUA technique whereby a person makes a deliberate backhanded compliment or outright insult to a woman to undermine her confidence and increase her need of the manipulator's approval or to increase her perceptions of the verbal aggressor's status relative to hers.

History

The technique was popularized by the PUA Mystery (Erik Von Markovic). He advised it be only deployed in the initial phase of courtship as a "display of high value," primarily intended to differentiate the male suitor in the woman's eyes from the other men who frequently pursue her.

In PUA terminology, the "neg" can be seen as the male form of the shit test (when directed towards women), and in more intense forms, as an example of intersexual bullying. Almost all teasing can be categorized as "negging," although "negging" is often more intense than teasing.

Tactics & (In)Effectiveness

A small amount of psychological research supports the notion that effectively manipulating a woman's self-esteem levels can be beneficial to men's dating prospects. Walster (1965) found that temporarily lowering a woman's self-esteem via the administration of negative test result feedback substantially increased her attractiveness rating of a male research confederate who had asked her out on a date before the test session. It is essential to note this study has not been independently replicated. Also, there was no control group, i.e., the effect only measured the difference between artificially boosted self-esteem versus the condition where the subjects received the negative evaluation. The applicability of this study to negging may also be limited as the "neg" was not delivered directly by the male subject.

If negging works at all, the literature on intersexual bullying tends to suggest that it would be most effective in dyadic (i.e., one-on-one) environments, as male intersexual bullying directed towards women is associated with lower peer status, perhaps owing to the women-are-wonderful effect and men's general tendency to behave protectively toward women.

Mimetic Relationship Dynamic & Groucho's Law

Luke Burgis noted that people who plays the Negging trick is desiring high value mates, thus imitating such values to achieve attraction ("posturing" in Midwit logic). Conversely, the person enduring the Negging would also second-guesses itself (FOMO) whether its desire is externally mediated (envy) or not (direct desire). Referencing Rene Gerard and Neil Strauss:

The desire that a person has for another person (or thing) is completely tied to how the desire for that person or thing is modeled to them by other people.

Venkatesh Rao furthers this in a social context, and coins two laws based on Groucho Marx, on how people do not want to know they are "settling for less" through Decile-denialism within homogenous environments, in relation to Mogging:

Marx’s First Law of Status Illegibility: the illegibility of the status of any member of a group is proportional to his/her distance from the edges of the group.

Marx’s Second Law of Status Illegibility: the stability of the group membership of any member is proportional to the illegibility of his/her status.

In either case, the illusive effect of Negging and Mogging falls apart when envy of the recipient is resolved, or that the person in question is not worth being envious about, opting for Chad or Stacy as direct objective desire in and of itself.

The Logic Of Envy also fits within this model, further elaborates on Cuckoldry being the flip side of marital neglect, instead of Porn being the flip side of voluntary impotence against shattering fantasy.

Examples

Some examples of negging are:

• "Nice nails, are they real?"

• "I think I saw some girls with more ridiculous shoes here, but you’re definitely in the top 2/5/10/[whatever number makes sense based on the size of the venue]."

• "With that wit, it’s a good thing you’re pretty."

• "You’re too much of a nice girl for me."

• "In one more drink I’ll be ready to hit on you."

See also

• PUA
• Game
• Bullying
• Flirting