This is part one of a two-part series.

I’ve nerded out on tons of dating, relationship, pickup artist advice on how to attract women. Some advice said to tease her; some said to ignore her. Some said to do it directly, some say to text her only after X number of days, and some say you have to be ‘masculine.’ When I started out, it was all really confusing to me. I needed a clear model that is replicable across cultures and different demographics of women.

There are a couple of schools of thoughts from evolutionary to social psychology, and just like all of the social sciences, there’s no one size fits all answer. However, there are some principles one can adopt to be attractive to women across all cultures.

How to Attract Women – The Universality of Status

Psychological research shows that there’s one universal denominator that women find desirable across all cultures, ethnicities, age groups and socio-economic standing and even in time periods.

The largest common denominator of what attracts women to men is men who are perceived to be of higher status around women.

Note, I used the word perceived because status is relative, and I’ll get into that later.

This is commonly known in the pickup artist community as being of higher status, or ‘demonstrations of higher value.’ People also usually decide to pursue a relationship by weighing the value they see in another person, including qualities such as physical attractiveness, wit, interests, and intelligence against their expectations of success in the relationship.

So, how do you become ‘high status’? Is it something that’s demonstrated through good looks, money, and success?

That’s both true and untrue.