Case study : Alpha male body language

Have you ever heard of PUAs? Actually this means Pick Up Artists and they form a worldwide community. These people are interested in male/female interactions so they spend their time going out to bars, night clubs, libraries, commercial places or just in the street in order to approach women and start an interaction with them. They develop techniques and test them "in the field" so they are very concerned about body language. They say if you have good body language, then you can be attractive by saying almost anything that comes to your head. They also have their own terms and theories.

The author of the video below seems to be member of that community since he entitled it : PUA Body Language : Edward Norton. It is an analysis of a very short extract from the movie "American History X" focusing on the main character's body language : Derrick (Edward Norton). The aim of the video is to give us an example of an alpha male body language. For PUAs, an alpha male is a dominant male who establishes himself as the leader of his group and who is, obviously, more attractive for women.

Here's the video:


Derrick is a racist gang leader and he went to jail for killing some black people. Half of the movie takes place before he went to jail and the other half after he was released and the scene analysed in the video is taken from the beginning of the second half. Derrick just gets out of jail and he's meeting up with his brother, his sister and his friend.

Derrick stands very straight, waving his hands and teasing the characters. He is has a very relaxed posture, gives hugs and keeps swinging his shoulder. Then he crosses his arms in order to show them that he is going to give everybody a lecture. He is standing up straight but looking looking down so he is show some kind of condescension by bending his head down and looking up with his eyes. It seems like this is the perfect body language to use if you are annoyed by somebody.

In order to tell the friend to get out of the room because he wanted to talk in private with his brother, he stood straight next to him, one hand on the friend's shoulder and another showing the door which means : if you want to take part of this conversation, you should physically get through me. He also makes him know that if he is asking him to go away, this is not personal...we will come back to that later.

Then begins the discussion with his brother. He keeps grabbing his arm which shows male dominance. The author insists on the fact that some men may feel insulted if show them such body language especially AMOGs in a set...what? You don't know what an AMOG is? Actually I didn't know three hours ago...An amog is the Alpha Male Of the Group and a set is a group of people! I told you these people are seduction nerds. If you do this by looking in someone's eye and looking down and keeping your shoulders back, then you show a good dominance body language.

Of course this is a good way to start a fight but only if it's not well communicated. In fact, even if you are teasing or admonishing someone, you should let that person know that you are not an ennemy and that you are doing all this because you care about her.