Every time your future girlfriend walks into a room, she unconsciously scans to determine who’s a threat, who’s familiar and who’s fuckable. It’s a neat trick called “thin slicing” and everyone does it constantly, blending knee-jerk reactions and gut instincts to decide who to talk to, where to go, and what to do. It’s just how our brains are wired. Case in point: a recent study found people only needed just 1/10 of a second to make indelible assumptions about someone’s attractiveness, likeability, competence and trustworthiness.

Every time your future girlfriend walks into a room, she unconsciously scans to determine who’s a threat, who’s familiar and who’s fuckable. It’s a neat trick called “thin slicing” and everyone does it constantly, blending knee-jerk reactions and gut instincts to decide who to talk to, where to go, and what to do. It’s just how our brains are wired. Case in point: a recent study found people only needed just 1/10 of a second to make indelible assumptions about someone’s attractiveness, likeability, competence and trustworthiness.

If you want to snag your future mate’s attention, you’ve got a very narrow window of time — here’s how to give yourself the best chance possible.

>> You Don’t Need To Be Handsome

If you look more like David Spade than David Beckham, don’t worry. A study from Columbia analyzed over 16,000 members of HotOrNot.com and found that objective good looks played a much bigger part for men than women when it came to picking a match. In evaluating mates, women were focused on visual cues that showcased the man’s social status, earning power and ambition. Remember: From an overly simplified biological perspective, women are looking for a stable man that can provide for potential offspring. Even if it’s a one-night stand, there are huge biological cues reminding that lovely lady not to take home a shlub. In that “thin slice” snapshot of you, she has to feel like you have high social value. Just listen to the 1999 hit “No Scrubs” by TLC. Are they singing about you?

Also, consider getting a nice red tie. A study from the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that women were more attracted to men in red, regardless of looks. This is more or less a hack of our biology, as red indicates male dominance in primates (which we basically are).

>> Act Like You Own The Place

Body language has a huge impact on perceived status. And one study addressed the concept of “embodied cognition,” which states that the mind is not only connected to the body, but that the body influences the mind. In studies at Harvard, researchers looked at the physical and emotional effects of holding both high and low power poses. High power posers (people who held a superhero posture with legs apart, shoulders back, and hands on hips) not only looked more powerful, but they displayed higher levels of testosterone and lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. They might have been studying this for its effects on job interview performance, but isn’t trying to pick up a girl kinda like a job interview that might end with sex?

>> It’s All In The Eyes

There are two kinds of smiles: the “duchenne” smile where your crow’s feet wrinkle up, and faker smiles that only engage your mouth. In that “thin slice” situation, most people can assess whether you’re smiling genuinely because you actually find them interesting — or giving a fake smile in a desperate attempt to get laid. A study from UC-Berkeley found that genuine smilers were not only rated as more attractive across the board, but that they lead higher quality lives and were more likely to be married and stay married later in life.

Giving a genuine smile is critical when meeting someone for the first time, and this applies double for any online dating profile pictures. The real hack, dubbed “squinching,” is the practice of closing your lower eyelids while keeping your upper ones open. And while that might sound weird and tricky to do, the results are undeniable. One squinch can turn a wide-eyed doofus into smoldering sexpot. It’s been proven to demonstrate competence, likability and influence in a study of over 60,000 assessments of 800 profile photos by the folks at Photo Feeler. Now that you know squinching exists, you’ll see it everywhere in the media, we promise. And you’ll thank us after your long string of Tinder successes.

>> The Numbers Game

If you’ve really been striking out recently, consider this: There are 423,000 women in the Denver Metro area between the ages of 20 and 39. 47% are either unmarried, divorced or widowed. Given the average bell curve distribution of attractiveness (adjusted for the general foxiness of the Colorado population), the number drops by another 46%. And after laying on another bell curve for intelligence, you’re left with almost 50,000 singles ready to mingle, all ranging from average looking and competent to super hot and way smarter than you. (We threw out the underwear models and the valedictorians. Sorry. Only being realistic here.)

That’s like the entire population of Hoboken — but instead of terrifying hags from New Jersey, they’re all nice girls who just might consider touching your penis some day. So if you even think there just isn’t anyone out there for you, remember you could hit on a completely different girl every day and it would take you over 135 years to get shot down by all of them. Now get out there, tiger. Demonstrate your high social status and make us proud.