The exception to this rule is something called “negging” in the language of so-called pickup artists. The idea is to say something subversively negative (negging)—but not too negative—to a woman to make her less confident. For example, the man might walk up to the woman and ask, “Did you just get your hair done?” Notice that it isn’t a compliment and it isn’t an insult. But the woman will register it as a criticism because there was no compliment appended to the question. The normal structure of that question would be “Did you do something with your hair today? It looks great.” When you put the compliment in the question, you’re using the “nice” strategy that won’t get you far. When you leave out the compliment and ask if the hair is different today, it suggests that perhaps you are not crazy about it. That unspoken put-down causes some women (not all, obviously) to reframe their situation as a confident male talking to a woman with some unspoken defect. That creates the illusion—or at least the possibility—that the man is a higher social rank. The perceived difference in social rank—illusion though it is—triggers attraction in the woman in this example because we are biologically wired to believe that people of higher rank probably have some sort of genetic advantage that got them there. And we want to mate with those people to pass those genes to the kids.