Author
Jack Schafer
The former FBI behavioural analyst who explains how trust and liking are built, one small signal at a time.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Jack Schafer is a former FBI special agent who worked as a behavioural analyst, where his job included building rapport with people who had every reason not to trust him. The techniques he used in that work, he argues, are the same ones ordinary people use, mostly without noticing, when a stranger becomes a friend.
The Like Switch, written with the psychologist Marvin Karlins and published in 2015, sets out those techniques for everyday life: how closeness, repeated contact, time together and the intensity of an encounter add up, which nonverbal signals say 'I am friendly', and how talk that keeps the focus on the other person earns their goodwill.
The signature
Schafer writes like an instructor: a principle, a short scene from his casework or daily life, then a technique to practise. His main point is that liking is rarely a mystery: it is built from small, repeatable signals, and the same signals that open people up can be misused, so he asks readers to use them honestly.
The questions they work on
- What makes a stranger decide within seconds whether someone is friend or foe?
- How do proximity, frequency, duration and intensity turn an acquaintance into a friend?
- Which words keep a conversation about the other person rather than about ourselves?
Thinking tools
- The Friendship FormulaUses and explains it
The friendship formula is Jack Schafer's summary of how rapport grows between people: friendship is a function of proximity, frequency, duration and intensity, so being near someone, often, for long enough and in ways that matter to them builds liking over time.
Learn it: Read People, Station 9 - Empathic StatementsUses and explains it
Empathic statements are short replies that reflect back what another person seems to feel or has just said, such as 'so it's been a long week', which Jack Schafer recommends because they keep the focus on the other person and show that you understood.
Learn it: Read People, Station 10
Limits and fair objections
A handful of nonverbal and verbal techniques can make almost anyone like you.
The Like Switch draws on its author's field experience and on social-psychology research, but it presents techniques with more confidence than single studies can carry, and some of its examples come from interrogation, where the aim is not friendship. In BookYol's reading, its signals are useful habits of warmth and attention, not a switch that works on everyone.
Stands on: research and argument · BookYol's reading