Summary: Don't just "watch what they do, not what they say" with women - apply it to all areas of your life.

Body:

This isn't necessarily any groundbreaking theory here, but it's important to be explicit about how important it is to watch what people do, not what they say in the real world.

I recently stumbled across a term, and it appears to have some scientific backing: Revealed-Preferences Perspective.

From wikipedia:

These models assume that the preferences of consumers can be revealed by their purchasing habits

Instead of trying to guess preferences of consumers, you actually look at their actions.

The popular book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries frequently discusses how you should not rely on what customers, or potential customers, say. But rather watch what they do.

Customers could not tell us what they wanted ... they revealed the truth through their action or inaction.

You want to split up customers into two categories using split testing, showcasing one product feature to only on subset of customers, and follow which group spends more money.

New customers were split automatically between these two versions of the site... Measure the difference in behavior between the two groups.

The reason is:

This is different from asking customers what they want. Most of the time customers don't know what they want in advance.

It's easy to kid yourself about what you think customers want.

It was used to describe founders' behaviors in the book The Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman in another context:

From a revealed-preferences perspective, in which we examine people's actions to learn about their preferences, solo founding is one of the clearest indicators of a founder's control orientation.

Essentially in comparing what motivates founders of companies (the primary motivators across the data being wealth or control), instead of simply relying on surveys ("what they say"), they followed the data of how well their actions correlated with their actual decisions which veer towards wealth or control ("what they do").

What does this mean for us at TRP? Essentially in all areas of life, you want to follow what people do, not what they say. Look to which guys the girls you want are actually fucking. Look at the dynamics between actually successful relationships. Look to which group of customers actually purchase the product. Look at which types of founders (solo or team founders) actually make control vs wealth decisions.

Lessons Learned:

  • There is no substitute for good data.

  • Don't just "watch what they do, not what they say" for females - apply it to all areas of your life.

  • The term for this is Revealed-Preferences Theory.