The key ideas

Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People

Vanessa Van Edwards, 2017

Why is one person remembered after five minutes of conversation while another is forgotten within the hour? Vanessa Van Edwards, who once hid from people herself, turned human interaction into a subject of research. She breaks every new connection into the first five minutes, the first five hours and the first five days, and gives you concrete techniques for each window.

Who it is for

For anyone who feels awkward meeting new people and freezes up at parties and business events. And for those who find it easy to talk but want new acquaintances to grow into real connections.

Don't try to impress people. Let them impress you.

The girl who hid at recess

At school, Vanessa Van Edwards was so afraid of being judged that she invented clever ways to avoid going out to the playground with everyone else at recess. She calls herself a "recovering awkward person." Talking to a stranger was not a pleasure for her. It was an ordeal.

Later she turned her weakness into a career. Van Edwards founded a research lab called Science of People and began to study human interaction the way a scientist studies animals in the field: with hypotheses, observation and testing. Captivate came out in 2017 and gathers what she calls behavior hacks: fourteen of them.

The book's main idea is simple. Getting along with people is not an inborn gift. It is a set of skills, and skills can be trained. Van Edwards breaks a new connection down by time. The first five minutes decide whether people want to talk to you. The first five hours give you a chance to understand who you are dealing with. The first five days turn an acquaintance into an ally.

We will walk through these three windows in order. You will learn where to stand at a party, which question can replace a dull "What do you do?", how to sketch a map of someone's character over a single dinner, and why asking for a favor brings people closer than a gift.

Permission to skip the places you hate

The popular advice goes like this: say yes to everything, and fake confidence until you feel it for real. Van Edwards says she believes neither. If you spend a whole evening putting up with a place you dislike, it shows on your face, and people read your boredom before you say a word.

So her first technique is to draw up your social game plan. Take every place where you socialize: weddings, conferences, bars, long lunches, walks, work meetings. Sort them into three groups. Places where you thrive. Places where you get by. And places where you only survive and count the minutes until you can leave.

From there the logic is simple. Spend more time where you thrive, and honestly turn down some of the places where you only survive. And if you do have to go, arrive with a plan: who to talk to, how long to stay and when to leave.

This is not a call to become a hermit. Van Edwards is asking for something else: stop spending your energy on someone else's script for success. A person who is enjoying the room is far more magnetic than one who is bravely enduring it.

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About the author

Vanessa Van Edwards is an American behavioral researcher and the founder of the Science of People lab. She teaches courses and runs training sessions on people skills.

All books by this author: Vanessa Van Edwards

Terms from the book

  • Dopamine
  • General Motors
  • Networking
  • Franklin
  • TED
  • introvert
  • Science of People
  • Big Five
  • Chapman
  • Social game plan: A technique from the book: sort the places where you socialize into those where you thrive, those where you get by, and those where you only survive, and choose the first kind more often. The author's term, not a scientific one.
  • Social Zone: In the author's map, the part of the room where people are already open to meeting someone, especially the spot where people walk away from the bar and the area next to the host.
  • Triple threat: The author's name for three first impression signals: open hands, confident posture and direct eye contact. An image from the book, not a scientific term.
  • Conversation sparkers: Questions the author suggests in place of the usual "How are you?" and "What do you do?" so the conversation comes alive and is remembered.
  • Bogotá: The capital of Colombia.
  • Toscano: Jeffer Carrillo Toscano, a tour guide in Bogotá the author writes about: he matched the street art he showed to the interests of each guest on his tour.
  • TripAdvisor: A website where travelers review and rate hotels, restaurants and tours.
  • Sloan: Alfred Sloan (1875–1966), an American executive who ran General Motors for many years.
  • Highlighter: Like the marker you use to highlight text. In the book, a person who notices what is good in others and says it out loud.
  • Thread theory: The author's idea that shared details (people you both know, a shared context, shared interests) bring people together, and that each such thread is worth finding and pulling deeper.
  • Howes: Lewis Howes, an American entrepreneur, author and podcast host. The author cites his introduction emails as an example of finding common threads.
  • Personality matrix: The author's technique: judge from someone's behavior whether they are high or low on each Big Five trait. A working guess for conversation, not a diagnosis.
  • Languages of appreciation: Five ways of giving and receiving thanks that the author borrows from Chapman's idea of love languages: words, gifts, time, acts of service and touch.
  • Foa: Uriel Foa (1916–1990), a psychologist who developed resource theory, which holds that people exchange love, service, status, money, goods and information.
  • Pennsylvania: A state in the eastern United States. In the eighteenth century it was a British colony with its own legislative assembly.
  • Vulnerability: Here, a willingness to show that you don't know something or that you need something.
  • NUT: The author's method for a difficult conversation, named after its three steps: Name the emotion, Understand its cause, and Transform the situation.

All terms

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