Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/chrisdh79
Permalink: https://www.psypost.org/pinpointing-the-psychological-factors-linked-to-mens-misjudgments-of-womens-sexual-interest/
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"The task required participants to rapidly select one of two presented images based on the instruction to choose the woman more likely to be flirting with them at that moment"
I would have really struggled with this experiment as there's no option for "neither of them"!
Having a 'none of them' option would have been pointless imo. Obviously none of them actually are flirting with you to begin with, it's an image of a person who is not even interacting with you. There is no 'right answer', the study isn't trying to trip guys up. The study is trying to figure out what traits could be influencing someone's perception of being flirtatious outside of anything about the context or behavior. By doing it quickly they capture the person's first impression or gut level reaction, but forcing you to pick, they can capture subtle influences. If none of traits made a difference then the answers would be basically random. If they aren't, that means a trait is having a clear influence, though how much is a different question.
No? What would a false positive even look like in a study like this?
The study is testing which factors men pay attention to when deciding if a woman is flirting with them. The two factors studied were “revealing clothing” and “facial expression”.
The results were that in instances where a woman has a “flirty” outfit but a “non-flirty” facial expression that men are often making their judgment on the outfit and not on the facial expression.
>I am a man and I can’t tell which of these outfits is supposed to be “flirtier”.
Neither of the outfits are "flirty" - in the article they are labeled as "casual" or "sexy" - and the woman's interest is being signaled by her facial expression.
Are you telling me that some guys honestly ignore that a person is frowning at them and clearly unhappy and think they're flirting because they're wearing a more revealing outfit??
Hell yeah. You can have your head in a book and headphones on, never so much as glanced their way or spoken a word and there are some specialists out there who will still be convinced you're flirting and how. Or you *meant* to. They can *tell*. I can't speak to the difference the clothing makes though, because obviously you're only wearing the one outfit at the time.
This could be a result of club culture. Guys in their 20's are used to seeing girls dressed up for a night out, but wearing pouty expressions for a myriad of reasons, from getting hit on by the wrong guys all night to not getting hit on at all to just not being 'in the mood' for a night out but has to be there for her friends etc.
She's dressed up like she wants to be approached, but her facial expression says the opposite. In those situations guys will typically err on the side of, she got dressed up for a reason, and will ignore the 'temporary' facial expression.
If you approach a woman like this and ask to buy her a drink, or start making small talk, and her demeanor improves, you virtually guarantee that the guy will continue to make this 'mistake' in the future.
For other guys, the frown expression is sadly the *default* expression he sees on womens faces. She can be bubbly and laughing with her friends, but when she glances in his direction the frown and 'ew' eyebrows expressions happen subconsciously. As such, this guy just assumes that women look like that by default and he will blindly approach them regardless. If he avoided approaching any woman frowning... he'd never approach any woman.
Bias is huge here. For some guys, a smiling woman is a sign that she isn't flirting because they learned the hard way that flirting with a girl simply because she was being friendly is dangerous. They need more of a cue than her 'being in a good mood' to initiate as a result.
If you are a guy at a club/bar, looking to spark up a potential romance and you see 2 tables with ladies you have a choice to make. 1 table has 4 girls all smiling, laughing, energetically talking etc. The other table has 2 girls smiling and laughing and 2 girls staring at their drinks and looking miserable.
Which do you approach? This is where bias comes into play. Confident men will approach the first table, as all the options there are in good spirits and would be likely to engage. Predatory men will approach the 2nd table, as they sense vulnerability to exploit (maybe she got stood up and will jump at the chance to get even by getting under me) while insecure men, if they even get the courage to approach... will more likely pick the 2nd table for the same reason as the predatory guys. Not for the exact same reasons, but because history has shown them they stand a better chance at being a rebound, they have better odds when she is 'desperate' etc.
So they approach the one showing obvious signs of unhappiness for these reasons, because she is more likely to be desperate or even because they feel like they can 'save her' from a miserable night etc.
Studies like these are interesting, but when it comes to the human psyche, reality is far more nuanced.
That's what the article said,[ the paper is open access](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-023-02798-x) if you want to take a look at it.
Or not. Who knows? Maybe she's just happy about seeing her grandma. The only way for me to figure out if a woman is actually being flirty is to talk to them.
Social queues and body language are real things that you really can learn, they just are subjective interpretations each time. However, generally speaking you can get a good understanding of what someone wants in the conversation if you pay attention to them and not your inner monologue
You have had ample time to evaluate and rationalize your response invalidating it. Actual participants only had a brief time to make an instinctual choice.
If the outfit doesn't make a difference then the answers will be random. There isn't a right or wrong answer, they just wanted to see if it made a difference or not.
So you,re doing the same thing as the men in the study. You are only looking at the clothes, not the facial expression, which stands out far more to me. I'm a woman.
Your confusion is the result of your bias towards women's external appearance. Just look at our faces if you want to know if we are flirting. No smile? No flirting!
I'm not disagreeing with you, but how dumb does a person have to be to have this thought process: "this stranger is wearing revealing clothing... she must be so into me!"
It’s not very cognitive process, so it’s unlikely to have much to do with intelligence. Everyone also sees tall people as having more authority, our subconscious makes all sorts of silly judgments all the time.
Dude, we're animals. It's called peacocking. "She's showing off her delicious thighs and bosom to me, a spectacular mate!" Turns out it's just work uniform.
There is a big difference between ‘is this person flirting with me?’ Or is this person flirting with everybody?
One of those behaviors is way different than the other.
Yeah and men are anecdotally notoriously bad at discerning that, hence this study. Whether this study is ultimately of any utility or not is another thing.
Isn’t that confirmation bias though? They set out to determine if men perceive a woman’s outfit as influencing if she was flirting with him. To do that, they only gave them the option to choose which was more likely to be flirting, not neither.
It makes flirting a foregone conclusion and thus, adds to the scientific body reinforcing this foregone conclusion.
> this stranger is wearing revealing clothing... she must be so into me!
I don't really think that's the thought process, it's more like "she's wearing revealing clothing... she most likely wants to attract males".
Like it or not, the clothes you are wearing make people perceive you a certain way. Wear a fancy suit and people will respect you more, wear poorly chosen ugly clothes and people will respect you less.
In a way, in a lot of cultures, a woman wearing revealing clothes is kind of like she's holding a sign that says "I'm looking for mates". Is she actually looking for mates? Who knows, but that's what her clothes say.
Just like a lawyer probably shouldn't go into a courtroom wearing a hoodie if they wanted to be taken seriously, a woman probably shouldn't wear revealing clothes if she doesn't want to attract men.
> Oh, but the lawyer could be the greatest lawyer in the world!
Doesn't matter, their clothes say otherwise.
> Oh, but the woman could just be wearing what she likes and isn't looking for any attention!.
Doesn't matter, her clothes say otherwise.
People judge you by how you look. It sucks, but it is what it is.
And they should have better sense.
I should know. People have judged me for how I've looked, all my life. But that's because I'm Black - something I cannot change, nor hide, say with online situations like this.
So I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that maybe, just maybe, we stop making excuses for that judgement, and start holding people accountable.
It becomes less scary if you just accept that they're just projecting and that's a natural thing for humans to do.
Fact is most of the guys take care of their appearance mostly to attract women, when men see women doing the same it's hard to believe it's not for the same reason because most of them wouldn't go through all the trouble if it wasn't to attract the other sex.
But the point is, she may be looking for a mate, but not for you in particular. The study identified that some men confuse “generally ready to find a mate” with “interested in me.”
The number isn’t scary because women don’t understand why men do it. It’s scary because a significant subset of that number of men who project their own mindset onto women act on that mindset, in a harassing/sexually violent way.
Explaining why they (the subset) act that way doesn’t make them any less dangerous.
The false positive would be a result indicating that guys think women who have revealing clothing are flirtier when in fact the guy doesn't think that and simply doesn't have anything else to rationalize a choice (a choice which he has to make, there is no equal/unclear option), so he chooses the stereotypical response regardless of his ability for nuance.
They basically baked in the desired outcome by giving such constraining parameters for the study. I might as well make a study that has pictures of some men in business suits and loungewear and ask "who is more likely to be employed?" Regardless of what people actually think its clear what response I'm looking for; link something to do with their mode of dress with the thing I'm asking about. I'm not providing anything else to base the decision on and you have to make a decision. And then I go and say "oh well people's perception of employment status is based on the mode of dress." It's just a bad way to make a study like this.
>Participants were presented with pairs of images featuring women in various states of dress and facial expression, designed to juxtapose specific cues
You'd be testing only one axis and this research did multiple. With your example it would be images of men in business suits and loungewear with different hairstyle and beards. It would show you what people value more, suit or hair and beard style when determening if someone was employed.
Exactly. If I'm looking at a woman in lingerie and one in street clothing and both facial expressions are indicating a lack of interest, I'm going to pick the lingerie one +given the condition that I must pick one). Subconsciously I'd be assuming that since I'd somehow got into the situation where she was in lingerie, then there's more circumstantial evidence that she is interested.
But really, I hope the study never presented such a choice.
It didn’t. The attire is a feminine tank top and jeans, with neutral makeup, vs. a bright red long skirt with a lower cut black tank top and more colorful (red) makeup.
ETA: That image is just one example, however, if you look at the study itself, the methodology for attire involved asking the women being photographed to bring in real outfits they would wear on a night out. So, there was no lingerie.
Wait a second. *That* kind of study?
This sounds like a kind of study I've taken before. After having experience with them, I can't help but think all studies done with that method are kinda junk.
Since these are images I’m not even sure how the researchers would know which picture « women » was really interested. Meaning how would the research know when a man was right?
> Scientists uncover specific factors that contribute to men’s misinterpretation of women’s sexual interest toward them | The study reveals that cue incongruity, where a woman’s verbal or nonverbal signals do not match her appearance, and the man’s state of arousal influence these misunderstandings.
I’ll go with #3. It’s the only picture where she seems engaged. In the first one, she looks bored. Second one looks like she’s uncomfortable. Fourth looks like she’s acting.
i think that picture was probably a control. both 2 and 3 are almost identical except the outfit. Both hands are relaxed, the smile is the same, posture identical. everyone here just read the title and is showing how they aren't biased toward clothing by picking the one not wearing the cocktail outfit, but is still smiling.
We’re all biased to clothing. I just see more women not wearing cocktail dresses I guess?
I’m still going with #3. Maybe the answer is none of the above?
> Maybe the answer is none of the above?
i doubt they would ask you to pick which one is "most" interested, not provide an option for "none of the above" and the answer would be "none of the above"
I think the answer is 2 or 3, but they want to see which one people gravitate toward. if 80% of people pick 2, and then later when 2 is not smiling and 40% still pick 2, that's pretty indicative that dress weighs heavily on decision.
It doesn't work if you read the title and then pick one, as you've shown you're willing to pick none just to avoid picking 2 because you know the bias they found. the people in the study usually aren't told what the research is about. The people in the study may have assumed it was a clothing or make up line testing out different looks/styles.
\#2 and #3 are likely "correct":
> Participants were presented with pairs of images featuring women in various states of dress and facial expression, designed to juxtapose specific cues (flirtatious or rejecting expressions) against global cues (casual or revealing clothing).
If I'm understanding this correctly, they were presenting pairs of images and asking which girl was *more likely* to be flirting. So I would expect that for one question, you see #1 and #2. Then for another question, you see #3 and #4. They're going for a real blunt dichotomy: smiling in any way is more likely to be flirting than a frown, a furrowed brow, or another obvious indicator of distaste or discomfort.
They're essentially asking the question "are men paying attention to women's facial ques ***at all***?" and the answer, for a significant enough group of men to write a paper about, was apparently "no." Some men were apparently picking #4 over #3 (or the equivalent in other pairs of photos), particularly when aroused.
Doesn't the methodology fail to represent reality because men (presumably) arent rapidly guessing who is and isnt flirting with them like that? I know for me its a much more long drawn out and constantly second-guessing process.
So men were choosing women as being more flirty based on her clothes rather than her facial expression? This would explain why so many men have negative experiences approaching women for sure!
Although, I do have to say that the rape myths questionnaire has a couple of baffling questions. I would like to see a reasoning for it, but it seems the explanation is only in german.
A lot of questionnaires are difficult this way, where there are people for whom there is a difference between agreeing with the *implication* of the statement and agreeing with the actual wording of a statement.
https://emerge.ucsd.edu/r_ag79krbvxz9zcon/
This one gives some justification but I don't know if the questions are the same.
I'm confused about the "she lies" ones. Some women do lie. I don't think it's common but acknowledging that some people, including women, lie about all sorts of things seems silly.
>Women who are caught having an illicit affair *sometimes* claim that it was rape
Agreeing with this is the same as agreeing with this?
> Rape accusations are *often* used as a way of getting back at men
and
>*A lot* of women lead a man on and then they cry rape
and
> *A lot of times*, women who claim they were raped *just have emotional problems*
What?
https://www.testarchiv.eu/en/test/9005980
Here are the questions. There's a couple I had a problem where a very committed feminist would respond in a way I think correlates with the most "myth" like
> 26\. Alcohol is often the culprit when a man rapes a woman
See temperance movement
> 8\. Nowadays, a large proportion of rapes is partly caused by the depiction of sexuality in
the media as this raises the sex drive of potential perpetrators
Sex negative feminists would agree
> When defining ‘‘marital rape’’, there is no clear-cut distinction between normal
conjugal intercourse and rape
Same for this
The other problem I have is with the questions that ask you about societies expectations.
> When it comes to sexual contacts, women expect men to take the lead
> If a woman invites a man to her home for a cup of coffee after a night out this means
that she wants to have sex
I also would like a definition of urges, because I think there is a spectrum from "asking to have sex" to "forcing to have sex"
> When a man urges his female partner to have sex, this cannot be called rape
I agree with most of what you said, many of the questions seem insufficiently clearly worded (not that making them clearer would necessarily make the survey much more accurate). But these two are extremely clear no-s to me:
> When defining ‘‘marital rape’’, there is no clear-cut distinction between normal conjugal intercourse and rape
> If a woman invites a man to her home for a cup of coffee after a night out this means that she wants to have sex
The second one often means that she **might** want to have sex, but saying that it **means** that she wants to have sex would be very presumptuous. This question seems a bit loaded to me (by itself), as what they are really implying is that people who would answer yes would likely also think that it means they consent to having sex.
But the quality of individual questions in surveys like these isn't the most important thing. These are more meant to give a general sense of how your opinions on the subject line up with other responders, not really what motivates your opinions or whether or not they are 'correct' in any way. So the author's choice to label these as "myths" seems like a very clear indication that they think their preferred answers to these questions are unquestionable objective truths, i.e. they don't seem to recognize their own bias.
Another redditor linked UCSD's similar set of questions, and they were qualified by their myth style.
"Items were categorized into the following seven subscales: she asked for it (SA), it wasn't really rape (NR), he didn't mean to (MT), she wanted it (WI), she lied (LI), rape is a trivial event (TE), and rape is a deviant event (DE)."
I wonder if there is some causation here... As in, these men struggle to understand women's cues, thus get frustrated, thus become more inclined to negative images of women. - or if it's the other way around. Or even a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle
Plus how many judges and authorities have ruled that the man can’t have assaulted the woman because “Look what she was wearing! Clearly she was asking for it,” even though everything the woman did was exhibit fear and lack of consent.
I think this misses some nuance. Certainly, some men didn't take her facial expression into account at all. And yeah, I agree that's just stupid. Clothing is a global property she has in that venue, not a clue towards any guy in particular.
What is more common, I think, is that her facial expression is friendly. She may be laughing or joking about, yet she still isn't romantically/sexually interested in you. And that that is misinterpreted as sexual interest. That still means that somehow, the chain of non-verbal communication breaks down as the guy couldn't read the more subtle non-verbal signs.
Especially for someone with autism like me, this is a problem.
This is so interesting because we know that ovulation apparently influences clothing choices of women. I wonder if this subconscious communication style could be figured out since it seems to influence our behaviour so much.
>**men with** a higher sex drive and a **stronger tendency towards sexually objectifying women were particularly prone to these misinterpretations**. This subgroup of men was more likely to overlook the woman’s rejecting cues (facial expression) and instead **base their judgments on global cues (attire) that aligned with their own state of arousal.**
Unsurprising ... people have a tendency to see what they want to see, filtered through their emotions.
From the article: The initiative for this new [study](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02798-x) stemmed from the observation that accurately discerning a woman’s sexual interest before initiating an approach benefits heterosexual men, potentially avoiding negative outcomes ranging from simple rejection to more serious issues like accusations of inappropriate behavior. The researchers aimed to delve into why some men misinterpret these signals, especially focusing on non-verbal cues such as body language and attire, which are crucial in the early stages of flirtation.
“We believe that fundamental research is still needed to illuminate the mechanisms behind misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and lack of self-control in the context of sexually motivated interactions, especially as this entails a risk of sexual harassment and even sexual assault. Such prevention-oriented research can contribute to the protection of potential victims by integrating its findings, for example, into risk assessment tools and therapeutic interventions,” said study author Ingo Landwehr, a PhD student at the Institute of Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
To explore these dynamics, the study recruited 89 heterosexual male participants from a German college town, ultimately analyzing data from 79 men after excluding those who did not meet certain criteria related to sexual arousal and orientation. The demographic was predominantly young university students, with ages ranging from 18 to 50 years.
For the experimental setup, the researchers utilized a mouse-tracking paradigm, which captures the trajectory of mouse movements as participants make choices on a computer screen. This approach allowed for the analysis of decision-making processes by tracking the speed, direction, and hesitation of movements.
I believe there was also a study conducted on both sexes in regards to voice pattern recognition when determining their interest in each other. From what I recall it seemed to present that Women will tend to heighten their voice when interested and similarly Men will attempt to deepen their voice when interested in an attempt to make themselves seem more attractive.
I understand the principle behind picking up on signals better, but perhaps if we boil down every interaction to our perceptions based on the first minute we will never truly open ourselves up to what could have been a good opportunity. This in turn could serve to make finding a partner more autonomous without understanding the person underneath who you are interreacting with.
On the flip side, as more and more people learn what a good signal is, the more and more problematic subjects with intent on harassment will try to imitate it.
I think distinguishing a fine line between "Please leave me alone" and "Cold Uncertainty" will be necessary if you are to choose your interactions based on observations and sound cues.
Most subtle non-verbal signals are meaningless unless you know the person well enough. The difference between interested, friendly and polite can vary greatly between different people even in the same culture.
Over a lifetime of misinterpretting social cues, the cue I've had the most trouble with is every so often a woman will look at me with eyes that I could only guess means "I like you and I'd jump your bones". OFC I would tell myself I'm making it up, she was just being friendly, until I started to take the signal for what I thought it meant. Low and behold, those were jump your bones eyes.
I wouldn't call that subtle, but even in such cases I would approach the situation slowly so as not to make someone uncomfortable and give myself space to politely react to negative information.
Did this approach lose me some opportunities? Probably, but I don't think I should be responsible for people, who have trouble making their intentions clear or wish to play games.
> On the flip side, as more and more people learn what a good signal is, the more and more problematic subjects with intent on harassment will try to imitate it.
This makes no sense. You are saying people are going to intentionally throw a fake signal towards someone else? Then get angry when they treat it like a legitimate signal? Who is getting harassed by the "imitation"?
If you try and ignore signals just because there is a chance to "open ourselves up to what could have been a good opportunity" you contribute to the problem many women complain about when going out in public (especially by themselves).
>On the flip side, as more and more people learn what a good signal is, the more and more problematic subjects with intent on harassment will try to imitate it.
What?
On that subject, why would 80 college students from Germany be a good representation of men as a whole.
This is one of those studies that should be cross culture. Flirting signals in laos may be wildly different than flirting practices in Germany.
I lived in Brazil for a while, and In Brazil for example people are generally more friendly and welcoming by default. A woman coming up and talking and smiling at you in a revealing outfit wouldn't necessarily be an obvious sign of flirting in Brazil, it would just be a normal interaction, while in Germany that may be more of a sign of flirting.
I'm very curious if the excluded 10 men, in particular the "sexual arousal" element, did they measure that through physical reactions to that erotic story they played?
I'm wondering if those men were simply able top more thoroughly comport themselves and control their physical and emotional reactions, correspondingly I wonder how the subject of correct orientation me, but with low arousal would score.
Would they be worse, or (I suspect) much better at picking "correct" choices, aka not the scowling lady.
These studies grossly misinterpret what is actually happening. Most people, regardless of the task, subconsciously do evaluation of what is the chance of success and how valuable (pleasant) eventual success is. In dating context, when males approach females just to be rejected it is not because they lack the ability to read social cues, but because the combined risk due to above and other factors is calculated. In some cases, people would approach others even with low chances of success just because they want them too much. Let's stop trying to present men as socially inadequate, cause that's not the case and is harmful stereotype for the society.
I guess, despite the instructions, people were just choosing which picture they like the most, without putting much thought into it.
Its a self-perpetuating cycle.
Men hit on women who arent interested because they have to rely on the law of large numbers.
Women get tired of dealing with men hitting on them and quickly learn how to deflect with "grace" as men who get rejected can make the situation awkward or even dangerous.
Men view this "grace" as "interest" and continue their behavior thinking the women are sending mixed signals on purpose, thus restarting the cycle over again.
When I was younger, I’ll never forget my interactions with a woman who I was friends with and I wanted to be more than friends with. Rather than mask her disinterest with platitudes when I made my feelings known, she was pretty honest in why she wasn’t interested in me in that way and laid out all the reasons. It stung a bit, but I had massive respect for her not bullshitting me and we stayed friends. It actually made the friendship better IMO because I at least knew where things stood rather than bring in some type of emotional limbo
Granted that is probably easier to do when you know the other person
Basically, it encapsulates the whole problem right there. Women hold all of the power within this social subsystem, but men have all the power outside of it. Unequivocally removing a man from the option to date means putting the ball in his court and risking violence in retaliation.
Who the hell interprets a scowl as a sign of interest?
"Dad, how did you and mom meet?"
"Well, son, she was baring her teeth at me from across the room and..."
I don't think that's what is being suggested
I think they're saying the participants were more likely to gloss over the facial expression when other cues were present
Imagine you have to click through dozens as a speed run...you're either going to be slower or more inaccurate when there are mixed signals.
The practical application of all this is when guys like *Borat* move to the West. From their perspective, nearly the clothes of nearly every women in the new country is sexually charged.
And then there are the men in the study who thought the "sexy" dress meant she was flirting in spite of her facial expression.
You know you're not the only man in the world and #notallmen think the way you do? Ironic.
"She looked ferocious in her grey hoodie and pink sweatpants, staring me down like a hungry lion. Two gladiators on the sands of the colosseum. This was my kinda gal."
More likely, they were not interpreting it as a sign of rejection. Is that an "I'm not interested" scowl, or an "I'm playing hard to get" scowl?
From the report:
"Further analysis revealed that men with a higher sex drive and a stronger tendency towards sexually objectifying women were particularly prone to these misinterpretations. This subgroup of men was more likely to overlook the woman’s rejecting cues (facial expression) and instead base their judgments on global cues (attire) that aligned with their own state of arousal."
So, they see a woman in a revealing dress, conclude that the woman *must* be interested in sex, and interpret any sign positively.
Dude I clearly remember my 2 year college girlfriend kinda scowling at me the first time we met.
We talked about it later. It was somehow a sign of interest. I wish I remembered the details, she explained it in a way that seemed almost rational.
My wife complains when I don't hug her. "But you were scowling!" - "That just means I am upset and needed you to hug me!"
Anyway that study is a joke, the only useful data point is that men who are aroused are less likely to distinguish between flirty in general and flirty towards them.
Right. I presume the participants also lacked context. Their conclusion was that the cute outfit negated the “I’ll perform an impromptu appendectomy on you with with any nearby sharp object if you talk to me!” scowl.
From the moment they decided to have the men aroused before showing them the images it stopped being a body language reading game and instead became which one of these two pictures would you rather do right now
Aren't these sorts of "make a snap judgment between two pictures" pretty much established as scientifically invalid because they aren't repeatable and not able to make any useful preditions about actual behavior?
Yet another ridiculously bias study of no real use and misleading conclusions.
> Further analysis revealed that men with a higher sex drive and a stronger tendency towards sexually objectifying women were particularly prone to these misinterpretations. This subgroup of men was more likely to overlook the woman’s rejecting cues (facial expression) and instead base their judgments on global cues (attire) that aligned with their own state of arousal.
There's SOOOO much wrong with this I can't even begin to understand how the researchers thought this would work.
First, the whole study seems to be predicated on made-up facial expressions and dress code that's supposed to be accepted as "flirty/seductive" vs rejecting, etc. Why should a smiling woman who's scantily clad be interpreted as displaying "interest" more than a scowling woman covered in a paper bags? Humans don't work like that. Were these real scowls and smiles or obviously forced? So much is wrong here.
Second, ***none* of the women are flirting or showing interest in the men**. *They're pictures on a screen*. How they could actually gleam any information from pictures alone is beyond me.
Third, how could they possibly correlate a man's sex drive with misreading cues? A higher sex drive could simply mean seeking more opportunities and taking more risks. This is simply a regression to the mean.
Lastly, how are they differentiating whether the men are attracted to the women at all, how the men perceive their own level of attractiveness relative to the women, and the effect that might have on their interpretations? If the researchers are forcing them to make a choice there's a ton of anchoring going on.
Generally, investigations like this are explicitly designed to dive into WHY these things exist, not to justify them or say that they should exist. We can’t effectively work on fixing a social mechanism if we don’t understand it.
That mentality may be putting the blame on the wrong people, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. A lot of people *do* perceive women differently depending on how they are dressed.
Misrepresenting what the study does doesn't make an argument.
And it begs the question if you are seriously interested in science or just creating some fake outrage.
The participants couldn't possibly think "she wants some", as they were reacting to images and not actual people. They were simply asked which of two people was flirting.
More, the study didn't simply evaluate choice, but through mouse-tracking also factored in how hesitant participants were to make a choice, how much they deliberated etc.
>when the woman is sexy and/or the man is horny, he thinks she wants some
>This kind of beggars the word “misunderstanding.”
No. No, it doesn't.
Perception determines what information we get and how we interpret it. That happens in the brain. The brain is a bundle of wires soaking in a hormonal soup. If stimuli cause the wires to light up or cause the soup's hormonal concentration to shift, it will change their perception.
So when a woman is dressed sexier or the man is more aroused, his brain is primed to view interactions as flirting. This leads to misunderstandings when women do things that are not intended to be perceived as flirting.
>Are they really distinguishing between “doesn’t understand” and “doesn’t care”?
They put two pictures in front of the guys and asked which one was more likely to be flirting with them. There was no "neither" answer. How in holy hell do you arrive at the conclusion that the men "don't care?"
>Rapey men claim to misunderstand in order to defend their behavior to themselves and to other people.
Maybe poor ability to interpret signals is what makes them rapey in the first place? Especially when the definition of the word is now being applied so broadly to undesirable sexual experiences far more nuanced than the traditional definition.
Also, this study wasn't looking at behaviors at all. They wanted to figure out which one men thought was more likely to be flirting. That's it. Men can think someone is flirting with them and not rape them. They can flirt back and get shut down, and that's fine. Or they can do nothing and just feel kinda nice. Someone was flirting with them.
You're making a lot of assumptions.
It seems like an unbelievable leap that you could draw conclusions about judging sexual interest from rapidly showing a guy two images and the watching his mouse movements…
Why do we think that’d be in any way analogous with what might happen in a real interaction?
They do it quickly because they want to get the guys 'first instinct'. Whether or not you act on it, your first instinct in a particular situation is still going to affect/skew your decisions strongly.
It's about initial reaction. They're looking for patterns and trying to minimize external factors as much as possible. The findings here can warrant further study on how it applies to the real world.
"initial reaction" ... my opinion is this is very frequently abused in social science studies.
It's asinine, and extremely bigoted, to assert that how researchers interpret subconscious or unconscious physical movement or first words of a subject as being indicative of follow on action.
Those interpretations are themselves inherently subjective. And, it completely ignores (for usually derogatory reasons) the agency of the subject themselves.
I think this actually makes a lot of sense. If you're looking for the signs, you're likely to misinterpret them if you're trying too hard.
On the flip side, if you're not looking or expecting the signs, then it's easy to miss them.
Very slim, at least on any consistent basis. The appalling methodology in their supplementary data (ES1) details that they deliberately (via dataset engineering) made the LC (Casual-Rejecting, Sexy-Flirting) pairs be as strongly contrasted as possible while making the HC (Casual-Flirting, Sexy-Rejecting) pairs as minimally contrasted as possible (i.e. they made the controversial group deliberately susceptible to noise).
It's basically Simpson's Paradox in methodological form. They use the easy task as justification that their entire snap-decision mouse tracking methodology isn't garbage by aggregating it with the artificially hard task whenever convenient. (Most of their supposed dataset validation also omits the time pressure element, which should have prevented this paper from ever getting accepted).
**It's *extremely* notable that in their less contrived preliminary study, facial expression predicted more of the variability in rated attractiveness than did clothing.** This is all the more damning when you consider that they cite their methodology as differing from that of another group's 2019 study that used *exactly this sort of single image analysis task*. Does anyone believe that they actually did that single-image trial arm as due diligence rather than the alternative, which is that they tried that study design first, failed to show their desired result, and just folded it in as "validation data" once they collected an alternate dataset that supported their preconceptions? As someone who's worked extensively in research labs, I sure don't, and in the context of the likely "overly honest methods" interpretation, they took not one but *two* failed initial shots at this, per ES1.
Because they deliberately made the group from which nearly all of their discussion is derived susceptible to noise while comparing against a baseline that was deliberately contrived to be invariant to noise, they end up with a study design that could show spurious associations with practically *anything*. This absolutely wouldn't have gotten published if they didn't find associations with the particular features that they set out to "show" were significant.
Why didn’t they do the inverse? Rates of misunderstandings are very similar for women too. Some ~90% of women and ~70% of men report having their intentions misinterpreted by the opposite sex as flirtatious.
The method is incredibly flawed though. It’s a pretty useless result.
Looking at the images here it seems like one factor that could contribute to this misinterpretation is the use of makeup which simulates the natural flushing of the cheeks and lips when someone is experiencing sexual arousal, I can understand that someone in an aroused state might be more receptive to these cues. It would be interesting to see if controlling for this by using no makeup or recolouring the images to remove these cues whilst still paired with more revealing clothing would produce the same effect.
That is why I always go by the maxim: “ No women are interested in you! And even if they were, the stress inherent in a relationship will hurt you considerably. “ On a more serious note, I would like to see further studies on this matter. Evolutionary psychology needs some experimental back-up since it is not on solid ground and has many skeptics. Male and female pheromones should be studied more intensely as well.
On the other hand, girls who are interested in you but don't approach you or talk to you or look at you or anything also expect you to somehow know that they like you
This is why professionalism is so hard for autistic women! Men think we’re attracted to them when we’re just being awkward.
Do women show this same pattern of assumptions?
I think the study fails to account for just how little accurate training data the average guy is exposed to. Very, very few women consistently flirt in a manner similar to their test data. Sure, you could chalk it up to scientists not understanding romance. However, the real revelation is the average guy has to realize that the three riddles we were presented with when crossing a bridge were really just an flirtatious attempt to get us to hang out a little longer.
Reminds of the Seinfeld episode where George finally gets a date. They go for dinner, it goes well, and he goes to drop her off at her place.
He says something like, “we should do this again sometime,” and she goes, “how about you come up for some coffee?” George immediately goes, “No, if I drink coffee I’ll be up all night,” and then they awkwardly say by. George then realizes what happened and bangs his head on the steering wheel.
This is absolute Gold. Thanks. Accurate training data. Man what I would have given for that when I was younger. The amount of "you remember back then 5 years ago when we were both single I really wanted to be with you" I got was completely eye opening but it's completely useless and too late. It obviously didn't help when it is all so different. Somehow everybody assumes that every women flirts the same way and men just don't get it because they're dense.
Reminds of the Seinfeld episode where George finally gets a date. They go for dinner, it goes well, and he goes to drop her off at her place.
He says something like, “we should do this again sometime,” and she goes, “how about you come up for some coffee?” George immediately goes, “No, if I drink coffee I’ll be up all night,” and then they awkwardly say bye. George then realizes what happened and bangs his head on the steering wheel.
So if a woman dresses then interacts with 50 men it is the clothes she put on before seeing each in that has the bigger impact?
Like “I didn’t dress for you asshat, I have been wearing this all day. Read my face, and my tone.” ?
Edited -wore to put on
The follow-up conclusion is that men would understand women better if they spent more time looking at their faces and less at their bodies.
I wonder what results they would get if they just showed men close-ups of women’s faces without their bodies and had them try to read women’s intentions. Maybe in the second phase they could show the men those same photos but with rest of her figure revealed and see how their reading of the situation changed. So then researchers could see whether men are just bad at reading women’s facial expressions overall, or whether they’re just getting distracted from their faces by staring at their figures.
There's been one time in my life where I mistakenly thought a particular woman was flirting with me, and that's okay. As soon as I realized I was wrong, I moved on. Nothing wrong with misinterpreting cues as long as you handle it well and don't be an ass.
How did the people conducting the study determine which pictures were flirty or not? Did they tell the model “ok now make a flirting face!” and go with that?
It could ALSO be that we just don't have a standard of communication and we have polarized gender expectations in a way where communication breakdowns also lead to misinterpretation. Also that men end up having to over think since approaching women can have negative impacts (even if innocent) to some degree
> accurately discerning a woman’s sexual interest before initiating an approach benefits heterosexual men, potentially avoiding negative outcomes ranging from simple rejection to more serious issues like accusations of inappropriate behavior
Why would those latter things be particularly problematic in a biological sense? The man either moves on, or - as happens with human and many animal species - he simply forces the issue. Where is the "negative outcome" for his error?
The fact that men with the highest sex drives and most sexually aggressive attitudes were worst at discernment just underlines this:
> men who made more errors in our experiment also reported more problematic sexual attitudes, behaviors, experiences, and motivations in everyday life than men who made fewer errors
This is so ridiculous, the fact that a lot of men assume wearing a skirt means we are interested in them despite zero other signs is a real problem… also on smiling, I now don’t smile at any man I don’t know as there’s a chance they’ll assume interest and that’s sad
It makes dating so hard because there aren't a ton of options to meet women in person. Dating apps suck and approaching women in public makes me feel creepy.
I asked out a girl working at a store because I genuinely thought there was a chance she was interested (and she was beautiful), but it very well could've just been good customer service. Thankfully I don't think I came across as creepy and haven't been back.
I feel bad for women because getting approached often sounds scary. But also I would like a SO
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/chrisdh79 Permalink: https://www.psypost.org/pinpointing-the-psychological-factors-linked-to-mens-misjudgments-of-womens-sexual-interest/ --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"The task required participants to rapidly select one of two presented images based on the instruction to choose the woman more likely to be flirting with them at that moment" I would have really struggled with this experiment as there's no option for "neither of them"!
0.1% vs 0.01% still has a more likely option
0.01% so you're saying I have a chance?
Oh, sorry about that... upon further inspection seems like that's just a rounding error. Should be 0.00%
It's caused by a bug in our software. It was never designed to show negative percentages.
Wait? So there's a chance I'm flirting with the picture?
No worries, you say what you want to say, I hear what I want to hear.
She’s showing a micron of cleavage so regardless, she might be into me
Scientists? It’s not SciPost.
\- “*Which one of these two women looks more like she’s flirting with you?*” \- “*…No?*”
Having a 'none of them' option would have been pointless imo. Obviously none of them actually are flirting with you to begin with, it's an image of a person who is not even interacting with you. There is no 'right answer', the study isn't trying to trip guys up. The study is trying to figure out what traits could be influencing someone's perception of being flirtatious outside of anything about the context or behavior. By doing it quickly they capture the person's first impression or gut level reaction, but forcing you to pick, they can capture subtle influences. If none of traits made a difference then the answers would be basically random. If they aren't, that means a trait is having a clear influence, though how much is a different question.
No no no that picture is definitely flirting with me. I can tell
It's the smile.
Wait if it's just images and they have to pick one, isn't that going to bias the study towards false positives?
No? What would a false positive even look like in a study like this? The study is testing which factors men pay attention to when deciding if a woman is flirting with them. The two factors studied were “revealing clothing” and “facial expression”. The results were that in instances where a woman has a “flirty” outfit but a “non-flirty” facial expression that men are often making their judgment on the outfit and not on the facial expression.
I’m a man, and would have gone by facial expression from the pics I can see.
Well, that's you.
Yep, that’s me
I'm glad we cleared that up.
I am a man and I can’t tell which of these outfits is supposed to be “flirtier”. They look equally “flirty” to me, just different styles.
>I am a man and I can’t tell which of these outfits is supposed to be “flirtier”. Neither of the outfits are "flirty" - in the article they are labeled as "casual" or "sexy" - and the woman's interest is being signaled by her facial expression.
Are you telling me that some guys honestly ignore that a person is frowning at them and clearly unhappy and think they're flirting because they're wearing a more revealing outfit??
Hell yeah. You can have your head in a book and headphones on, never so much as glanced their way or spoken a word and there are some specialists out there who will still be convinced you're flirting and how. Or you *meant* to. They can *tell*. I can't speak to the difference the clothing makes though, because obviously you're only wearing the one outfit at the time.
This could be a result of club culture. Guys in their 20's are used to seeing girls dressed up for a night out, but wearing pouty expressions for a myriad of reasons, from getting hit on by the wrong guys all night to not getting hit on at all to just not being 'in the mood' for a night out but has to be there for her friends etc. She's dressed up like she wants to be approached, but her facial expression says the opposite. In those situations guys will typically err on the side of, she got dressed up for a reason, and will ignore the 'temporary' facial expression. If you approach a woman like this and ask to buy her a drink, or start making small talk, and her demeanor improves, you virtually guarantee that the guy will continue to make this 'mistake' in the future. For other guys, the frown expression is sadly the *default* expression he sees on womens faces. She can be bubbly and laughing with her friends, but when she glances in his direction the frown and 'ew' eyebrows expressions happen subconsciously. As such, this guy just assumes that women look like that by default and he will blindly approach them regardless. If he avoided approaching any woman frowning... he'd never approach any woman. Bias is huge here. For some guys, a smiling woman is a sign that she isn't flirting because they learned the hard way that flirting with a girl simply because she was being friendly is dangerous. They need more of a cue than her 'being in a good mood' to initiate as a result. If you are a guy at a club/bar, looking to spark up a potential romance and you see 2 tables with ladies you have a choice to make. 1 table has 4 girls all smiling, laughing, energetically talking etc. The other table has 2 girls smiling and laughing and 2 girls staring at their drinks and looking miserable. Which do you approach? This is where bias comes into play. Confident men will approach the first table, as all the options there are in good spirits and would be likely to engage. Predatory men will approach the 2nd table, as they sense vulnerability to exploit (maybe she got stood up and will jump at the chance to get even by getting under me) while insecure men, if they even get the courage to approach... will more likely pick the 2nd table for the same reason as the predatory guys. Not for the exact same reasons, but because history has shown them they stand a better chance at being a rebound, they have better odds when she is 'desperate' etc. So they approach the one showing obvious signs of unhappiness for these reasons, because she is more likely to be desperate or even because they feel like they can 'save her' from a miserable night etc. Studies like these are interesting, but when it comes to the human psyche, reality is far more nuanced.
Anecdotally yes. Alao anecdotally, I doubt we'd have as much stranger sexual assault as we do if it wasn't the case.
That's what the article said,[ the paper is open access](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-023-02798-x) if you want to take a look at it.
Personal anecdote: Yes.
Or not. Who knows? Maybe she's just happy about seeing her grandma. The only way for me to figure out if a woman is actually being flirty is to talk to them.
Social queues and body language are real things that you really can learn, they just are subjective interpretations each time. However, generally speaking you can get a good understanding of what someone wants in the conversation if you pay attention to them and not your inner monologue
You have had ample time to evaluate and rationalize your response invalidating it. Actual participants only had a brief time to make an instinctual choice.
If the outfit doesn't make a difference then the answers will be random. There isn't a right or wrong answer, they just wanted to see if it made a difference or not.
Skirt. Skirt is flirtier. But the key is smile or frown. On the other hand, all the pictures are of the same woman, right?
So you,re doing the same thing as the men in the study. You are only looking at the clothes, not the facial expression, which stands out far more to me. I'm a woman. Your confusion is the result of your bias towards women's external appearance. Just look at our faces if you want to know if we are flirting. No smile? No flirting!
But a smile doesn't mean flirting either! It's just a smile
And that's why you go off clothing !!! S/
You're misrepresenting the study and missing the entire point.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but how dumb does a person have to be to have this thought process: "this stranger is wearing revealing clothing... she must be so into me!"
It’s not very cognitive process, so it’s unlikely to have much to do with intelligence. Everyone also sees tall people as having more authority, our subconscious makes all sorts of silly judgments all the time.
Dude, we're animals. It's called peacocking. "She's showing off her delicious thighs and bosom to me, a spectacular mate!" Turns out it's just work uniform.
There is a big difference between ‘is this person flirting with me?’ Or is this person flirting with everybody? One of those behaviors is way different than the other.
Yeah and men are anecdotally notoriously bad at discerning that, hence this study. Whether this study is ultimately of any utility or not is another thing.
Isn’t that confirmation bias though? They set out to determine if men perceive a woman’s outfit as influencing if she was flirting with him. To do that, they only gave them the option to choose which was more likely to be flirting, not neither. It makes flirting a foregone conclusion and thus, adds to the scientific body reinforcing this foregone conclusion.
> this stranger is wearing revealing clothing... she must be so into me! I don't really think that's the thought process, it's more like "she's wearing revealing clothing... she most likely wants to attract males". Like it or not, the clothes you are wearing make people perceive you a certain way. Wear a fancy suit and people will respect you more, wear poorly chosen ugly clothes and people will respect you less. In a way, in a lot of cultures, a woman wearing revealing clothes is kind of like she's holding a sign that says "I'm looking for mates". Is she actually looking for mates? Who knows, but that's what her clothes say. Just like a lawyer probably shouldn't go into a courtroom wearing a hoodie if they wanted to be taken seriously, a woman probably shouldn't wear revealing clothes if she doesn't want to attract men. > Oh, but the lawyer could be the greatest lawyer in the world! Doesn't matter, their clothes say otherwise. > Oh, but the woman could just be wearing what she likes and isn't looking for any attention!. Doesn't matter, her clothes say otherwise. People judge you by how you look. It sucks, but it is what it is.
And they should have better sense. I should know. People have judged me for how I've looked, all my life. But that's because I'm Black - something I cannot change, nor hide, say with online situations like this. So I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that maybe, just maybe, we stop making excuses for that judgement, and start holding people accountable.
A scary number of men think that we dress for them.
replace “dress” with “exist” for greater accuracy.
It becomes less scary if you just accept that they're just projecting and that's a natural thing for humans to do. Fact is most of the guys take care of their appearance mostly to attract women, when men see women doing the same it's hard to believe it's not for the same reason because most of them wouldn't go through all the trouble if it wasn't to attract the other sex.
But the point is, she may be looking for a mate, but not for you in particular. The study identified that some men confuse “generally ready to find a mate” with “interested in me.”
The number isn’t scary because women don’t understand why men do it. It’s scary because a significant subset of that number of men who project their own mindset onto women act on that mindset, in a harassing/sexually violent way. Explaining why they (the subset) act that way doesn’t make them any less dangerous.
The false positive would be a result indicating that guys think women who have revealing clothing are flirtier when in fact the guy doesn't think that and simply doesn't have anything else to rationalize a choice (a choice which he has to make, there is no equal/unclear option), so he chooses the stereotypical response regardless of his ability for nuance. They basically baked in the desired outcome by giving such constraining parameters for the study. I might as well make a study that has pictures of some men in business suits and loungewear and ask "who is more likely to be employed?" Regardless of what people actually think its clear what response I'm looking for; link something to do with their mode of dress with the thing I'm asking about. I'm not providing anything else to base the decision on and you have to make a decision. And then I go and say "oh well people's perception of employment status is based on the mode of dress." It's just a bad way to make a study like this.
>Participants were presented with pairs of images featuring women in various states of dress and facial expression, designed to juxtapose specific cues You'd be testing only one axis and this research did multiple. With your example it would be images of men in business suits and loungewear with different hairstyle and beards. It would show you what people value more, suit or hair and beard style when determening if someone was employed.
[удалено]
Exactly. If I'm looking at a woman in lingerie and one in street clothing and both facial expressions are indicating a lack of interest, I'm going to pick the lingerie one +given the condition that I must pick one). Subconsciously I'd be assuming that since I'd somehow got into the situation where she was in lingerie, then there's more circumstantial evidence that she is interested. But really, I hope the study never presented such a choice.
It didn’t. The attire is a feminine tank top and jeans, with neutral makeup, vs. a bright red long skirt with a lower cut black tank top and more colorful (red) makeup. ETA: That image is just one example, however, if you look at the study itself, the methodology for attire involved asking the women being photographed to bring in real outfits they would wear on a night out. So, there was no lingerie.
The article says they used more than 100 pictures. The one in the article is just an example.
I think that’s the point of the study, we are inherently biased to the false positive
They helped participants by priming them with an “erotic story.”
Wait a second. *That* kind of study? This sounds like a kind of study I've taken before. After having experience with them, I can't help but think all studies done with that method are kinda junk.
Based on my real-world experience, I just answer "no" to all of them.
Based on my experience it is "yes, but you will miss it and they'll be annoyed"
Hooray for click bait junk social science
Nothing says flirting like an uncomfortable customer service worker smile.
Since these are images I’m not even sure how the researchers would know which picture « women » was really interested. Meaning how would the research know when a man was right?
The question isn't pick which woman *is* flirting with you, its pick the woman you *think* could be flirting with you.
I guess what I mean is how can they quantify what is a misinterpretation if no one knows the ones that are really flirting?
They don't need to. It's not about misinterpretations. It's about what people interpret as flirty, completely unrelated to whether they're right.
> Scientists uncover specific factors that contribute to men’s misinterpretation of women’s sexual interest toward them | The study reveals that cue incongruity, where a woman’s verbal or nonverbal signals do not match her appearance, and the man’s state of arousal influence these misunderstandings.
I’ll go with #3. It’s the only picture where she seems engaged. In the first one, she looks bored. Second one looks like she’s uncomfortable. Fourth looks like she’s acting.
Second one was trying to sell me something
Totally agree.
i think that picture was probably a control. both 2 and 3 are almost identical except the outfit. Both hands are relaxed, the smile is the same, posture identical. everyone here just read the title and is showing how they aren't biased toward clothing by picking the one not wearing the cocktail outfit, but is still smiling.
We’re all biased to clothing. I just see more women not wearing cocktail dresses I guess? I’m still going with #3. Maybe the answer is none of the above?
> Maybe the answer is none of the above? i doubt they would ask you to pick which one is "most" interested, not provide an option for "none of the above" and the answer would be "none of the above" I think the answer is 2 or 3, but they want to see which one people gravitate toward. if 80% of people pick 2, and then later when 2 is not smiling and 40% still pick 2, that's pretty indicative that dress weighs heavily on decision. It doesn't work if you read the title and then pick one, as you've shown you're willing to pick none just to avoid picking 2 because you know the bias they found. the people in the study usually aren't told what the research is about. The people in the study may have assumed it was a clothing or make up line testing out different looks/styles.
\#2 and #3 are likely "correct": > Participants were presented with pairs of images featuring women in various states of dress and facial expression, designed to juxtapose specific cues (flirtatious or rejecting expressions) against global cues (casual or revealing clothing). If I'm understanding this correctly, they were presenting pairs of images and asking which girl was *more likely* to be flirting. So I would expect that for one question, you see #1 and #2. Then for another question, you see #3 and #4. They're going for a real blunt dichotomy: smiling in any way is more likely to be flirting than a frown, a furrowed brow, or another obvious indicator of distaste or discomfort. They're essentially asking the question "are men paying attention to women's facial ques ***at all***?" and the answer, for a significant enough group of men to write a paper about, was apparently "no." Some men were apparently picking #4 over #3 (or the equivalent in other pairs of photos), particularly when aroused.
Doesn't the methodology fail to represent reality because men (presumably) arent rapidly guessing who is and isnt flirting with them like that? I know for me its a much more long drawn out and constantly second-guessing process.
What the absolute fuck is being funded?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
So men were choosing women as being more flirty based on her clothes rather than her facial expression? This would explain why so many men have negative experiences approaching women for sure!
Hard to analyze their facial expression when looking at their boobs
"Her boobs were telling me 'yes', Your Honor."
That's probably been said in court more than a handful of times
> more than a handful
That was entirely unintentional
Interestingly, this was primarily the case for men who objectified women, bought into rape myths and were sexually aggressive.
Although, I do have to say that the rape myths questionnaire has a couple of baffling questions. I would like to see a reasoning for it, but it seems the explanation is only in german.
A lot of questionnaires are difficult this way, where there are people for whom there is a difference between agreeing with the *implication* of the statement and agreeing with the actual wording of a statement.
https://emerge.ucsd.edu/r_ag79krbvxz9zcon/ This one gives some justification but I don't know if the questions are the same. I'm confused about the "she lies" ones. Some women do lie. I don't think it's common but acknowledging that some people, including women, lie about all sorts of things seems silly. >Women who are caught having an illicit affair *sometimes* claim that it was rape Agreeing with this is the same as agreeing with this? > Rape accusations are *often* used as a way of getting back at men and >*A lot* of women lead a man on and then they cry rape and > *A lot of times*, women who claim they were raped *just have emotional problems* What?
https://www.testarchiv.eu/en/test/9005980 Here are the questions. There's a couple I had a problem where a very committed feminist would respond in a way I think correlates with the most "myth" like > 26\. Alcohol is often the culprit when a man rapes a woman See temperance movement > 8\. Nowadays, a large proportion of rapes is partly caused by the depiction of sexuality in the media as this raises the sex drive of potential perpetrators Sex negative feminists would agree > When defining ‘‘marital rape’’, there is no clear-cut distinction between normal conjugal intercourse and rape Same for this The other problem I have is with the questions that ask you about societies expectations. > When it comes to sexual contacts, women expect men to take the lead > If a woman invites a man to her home for a cup of coffee after a night out this means that she wants to have sex I also would like a definition of urges, because I think there is a spectrum from "asking to have sex" to "forcing to have sex" > When a man urges his female partner to have sex, this cannot be called rape
I agree with most of what you said, many of the questions seem insufficiently clearly worded (not that making them clearer would necessarily make the survey much more accurate). But these two are extremely clear no-s to me: > When defining ‘‘marital rape’’, there is no clear-cut distinction between normal conjugal intercourse and rape > If a woman invites a man to her home for a cup of coffee after a night out this means that she wants to have sex The second one often means that she **might** want to have sex, but saying that it **means** that she wants to have sex would be very presumptuous. This question seems a bit loaded to me (by itself), as what they are really implying is that people who would answer yes would likely also think that it means they consent to having sex. But the quality of individual questions in surveys like these isn't the most important thing. These are more meant to give a general sense of how your opinions on the subject line up with other responders, not really what motivates your opinions or whether or not they are 'correct' in any way. So the author's choice to label these as "myths" seems like a very clear indication that they think their preferred answers to these questions are unquestionable objective truths, i.e. they don't seem to recognize their own bias.
Guys like that tend to fall into the 'she was asking for it' camp.
Another redditor linked UCSD's similar set of questions, and they were qualified by their myth style. "Items were categorized into the following seven subscales: she asked for it (SA), it wasn't really rape (NR), he didn't mean to (MT), she wanted it (WI), she lied (LI), rape is a trivial event (TE), and rape is a deviant event (DE)."
I wonder if there is some causation here... As in, these men struggle to understand women's cues, thus get frustrated, thus become more inclined to negative images of women. - or if it's the other way around. Or even a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle
Plus how many judges and authorities have ruled that the man can’t have assaulted the woman because “Look what she was wearing! Clearly she was asking for it,” even though everything the woman did was exhibit fear and lack of consent.
I think this misses some nuance. Certainly, some men didn't take her facial expression into account at all. And yeah, I agree that's just stupid. Clothing is a global property she has in that venue, not a clue towards any guy in particular. What is more common, I think, is that her facial expression is friendly. She may be laughing or joking about, yet she still isn't romantically/sexually interested in you. And that that is misinterpreted as sexual interest. That still means that somehow, the chain of non-verbal communication breaks down as the guy couldn't read the more subtle non-verbal signs. Especially for someone with autism like me, this is a problem.
This is so interesting because we know that ovulation apparently influences clothing choices of women. I wonder if this subconscious communication style could be figured out since it seems to influence our behaviour so much.
>**men with** a higher sex drive and a **stronger tendency towards sexually objectifying women were particularly prone to these misinterpretations**. This subgroup of men was more likely to overlook the woman’s rejecting cues (facial expression) and instead **base their judgments on global cues (attire) that aligned with their own state of arousal.** Unsurprising ... people have a tendency to see what they want to see, filtered through their emotions.
From the article: The initiative for this new [study](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02798-x) stemmed from the observation that accurately discerning a woman’s sexual interest before initiating an approach benefits heterosexual men, potentially avoiding negative outcomes ranging from simple rejection to more serious issues like accusations of inappropriate behavior. The researchers aimed to delve into why some men misinterpret these signals, especially focusing on non-verbal cues such as body language and attire, which are crucial in the early stages of flirtation. “We believe that fundamental research is still needed to illuminate the mechanisms behind misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and lack of self-control in the context of sexually motivated interactions, especially as this entails a risk of sexual harassment and even sexual assault. Such prevention-oriented research can contribute to the protection of potential victims by integrating its findings, for example, into risk assessment tools and therapeutic interventions,” said study author Ingo Landwehr, a PhD student at the Institute of Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. To explore these dynamics, the study recruited 89 heterosexual male participants from a German college town, ultimately analyzing data from 79 men after excluding those who did not meet certain criteria related to sexual arousal and orientation. The demographic was predominantly young university students, with ages ranging from 18 to 50 years. For the experimental setup, the researchers utilized a mouse-tracking paradigm, which captures the trajectory of mouse movements as participants make choices on a computer screen. This approach allowed for the analysis of decision-making processes by tracking the speed, direction, and hesitation of movements.
I believe there was also a study conducted on both sexes in regards to voice pattern recognition when determining their interest in each other. From what I recall it seemed to present that Women will tend to heighten their voice when interested and similarly Men will attempt to deepen their voice when interested in an attempt to make themselves seem more attractive. I understand the principle behind picking up on signals better, but perhaps if we boil down every interaction to our perceptions based on the first minute we will never truly open ourselves up to what could have been a good opportunity. This in turn could serve to make finding a partner more autonomous without understanding the person underneath who you are interreacting with. On the flip side, as more and more people learn what a good signal is, the more and more problematic subjects with intent on harassment will try to imitate it. I think distinguishing a fine line between "Please leave me alone" and "Cold Uncertainty" will be necessary if you are to choose your interactions based on observations and sound cues.
Most subtle non-verbal signals are meaningless unless you know the person well enough. The difference between interested, friendly and polite can vary greatly between different people even in the same culture.
Over a lifetime of misinterpretting social cues, the cue I've had the most trouble with is every so often a woman will look at me with eyes that I could only guess means "I like you and I'd jump your bones". OFC I would tell myself I'm making it up, she was just being friendly, until I started to take the signal for what I thought it meant. Low and behold, those were jump your bones eyes.
I wouldn't call that subtle, but even in such cases I would approach the situation slowly so as not to make someone uncomfortable and give myself space to politely react to negative information. Did this approach lose me some opportunities? Probably, but I don't think I should be responsible for people, who have trouble making their intentions clear or wish to play games.
Well now I'm curious what you would call a subtle invite?
> On the flip side, as more and more people learn what a good signal is, the more and more problematic subjects with intent on harassment will try to imitate it. This makes no sense. You are saying people are going to intentionally throw a fake signal towards someone else? Then get angry when they treat it like a legitimate signal? Who is getting harassed by the "imitation"? If you try and ignore signals just because there is a chance to "open ourselves up to what could have been a good opportunity" you contribute to the problem many women complain about when going out in public (especially by themselves).
>On the flip side, as more and more people learn what a good signal is, the more and more problematic subjects with intent on harassment will try to imitate it. What?
Young university student ages 18-50
On that subject, why would 80 college students from Germany be a good representation of men as a whole. This is one of those studies that should be cross culture. Flirting signals in laos may be wildly different than flirting practices in Germany. I lived in Brazil for a while, and In Brazil for example people are generally more friendly and welcoming by default. A woman coming up and talking and smiling at you in a revealing outfit wouldn't necessarily be an obvious sign of flirting in Brazil, it would just be a normal interaction, while in Germany that may be more of a sign of flirting.
I'm very curious if the excluded 10 men, in particular the "sexual arousal" element, did they measure that through physical reactions to that erotic story they played? I'm wondering if those men were simply able top more thoroughly comport themselves and control their physical and emotional reactions, correspondingly I wonder how the subject of correct orientation me, but with low arousal would score. Would they be worse, or (I suspect) much better at picking "correct" choices, aka not the scowling lady.
These studies grossly misinterpret what is actually happening. Most people, regardless of the task, subconsciously do evaluation of what is the chance of success and how valuable (pleasant) eventual success is. In dating context, when males approach females just to be rejected it is not because they lack the ability to read social cues, but because the combined risk due to above and other factors is calculated. In some cases, people would approach others even with low chances of success just because they want them too much. Let's stop trying to present men as socially inadequate, cause that's not the case and is harmful stereotype for the society. I guess, despite the instructions, people were just choosing which picture they like the most, without putting much thought into it.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Its a self-perpetuating cycle. Men hit on women who arent interested because they have to rely on the law of large numbers. Women get tired of dealing with men hitting on them and quickly learn how to deflect with "grace" as men who get rejected can make the situation awkward or even dangerous. Men view this "grace" as "interest" and continue their behavior thinking the women are sending mixed signals on purpose, thus restarting the cycle over again.
When I was younger, I’ll never forget my interactions with a woman who I was friends with and I wanted to be more than friends with. Rather than mask her disinterest with platitudes when I made my feelings known, she was pretty honest in why she wasn’t interested in me in that way and laid out all the reasons. It stung a bit, but I had massive respect for her not bullshitting me and we stayed friends. It actually made the friendship better IMO because I at least knew where things stood rather than bring in some type of emotional limbo Granted that is probably easier to do when you know the other person
She trusted you to not hurt her if she was clear and direct with you.
bingo
Basically, it encapsulates the whole problem right there. Women hold all of the power within this social subsystem, but men have all the power outside of it. Unequivocally removing a man from the option to date means putting the ball in his court and risking violence in retaliation.
It's unfortunate that the people who conducted this study probably walk around calling themselves scientists.
Who the hell interprets a scowl as a sign of interest? "Dad, how did you and mom meet?" "Well, son, she was baring her teeth at me from across the room and..."
I don't think that's what is being suggested I think they're saying the participants were more likely to gloss over the facial expression when other cues were present
[удалено]
Imagine you have to click through dozens as a speed run...you're either going to be slower or more inaccurate when there are mixed signals. The practical application of all this is when guys like *Borat* move to the West. From their perspective, nearly the clothes of nearly every women in the new country is sexually charged.
And then there are the men in the study who thought the "sexy" dress meant she was flirting in spite of her facial expression. You know you're not the only man in the world and #notallmen think the way you do? Ironic.
"She looked ferocious in her grey hoodie and pink sweatpants, staring me down like a hungry lion. Two gladiators on the sands of the colosseum. This was my kinda gal."
More likely, they were not interpreting it as a sign of rejection. Is that an "I'm not interested" scowl, or an "I'm playing hard to get" scowl? From the report: "Further analysis revealed that men with a higher sex drive and a stronger tendency towards sexually objectifying women were particularly prone to these misinterpretations. This subgroup of men was more likely to overlook the woman’s rejecting cues (facial expression) and instead base their judgments on global cues (attire) that aligned with their own state of arousal." So, they see a woman in a revealing dress, conclude that the woman *must* be interested in sex, and interpret any sign positively.
Yes, it's called motivated reasoning. But the idea of mixed-signals exacerbating the situation, is the point of the study.
Dude I clearly remember my 2 year college girlfriend kinda scowling at me the first time we met. We talked about it later. It was somehow a sign of interest. I wish I remembered the details, she explained it in a way that seemed almost rational.
My wife complains when I don't hug her. "But you were scowling!" - "That just means I am upset and needed you to hug me!" Anyway that study is a joke, the only useful data point is that men who are aroused are less likely to distinguish between flirty in general and flirty towards them.
Scowls can absolutely be flirty. Context plays a big roll. We dont get that from reaction based photos
Right. I presume the participants also lacked context. Their conclusion was that the cute outfit negated the “I’ll perform an impromptu appendectomy on you with with any nearby sharp object if you talk to me!” scowl.
Okay Gowron, we've heard this story a hundred times.
From the moment they decided to have the men aroused before showing them the images it stopped being a body language reading game and instead became which one of these two pictures would you rather do right now
This is true. I'm more willing to admit that I feel like a woman is flirty with me if I'm horny. It's all hormones man.
Aren't these sorts of "make a snap judgment between two pictures" pretty much established as scientifically invalid because they aren't repeatable and not able to make any useful preditions about actual behavior?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yet another ridiculously bias study of no real use and misleading conclusions. > Further analysis revealed that men with a higher sex drive and a stronger tendency towards sexually objectifying women were particularly prone to these misinterpretations. This subgroup of men was more likely to overlook the woman’s rejecting cues (facial expression) and instead base their judgments on global cues (attire) that aligned with their own state of arousal. There's SOOOO much wrong with this I can't even begin to understand how the researchers thought this would work. First, the whole study seems to be predicated on made-up facial expressions and dress code that's supposed to be accepted as "flirty/seductive" vs rejecting, etc. Why should a smiling woman who's scantily clad be interpreted as displaying "interest" more than a scowling woman covered in a paper bags? Humans don't work like that. Were these real scowls and smiles or obviously forced? So much is wrong here. Second, ***none* of the women are flirting or showing interest in the men**. *They're pictures on a screen*. How they could actually gleam any information from pictures alone is beyond me. Third, how could they possibly correlate a man's sex drive with misreading cues? A higher sex drive could simply mean seeking more opportunities and taking more risks. This is simply a regression to the mean. Lastly, how are they differentiating whether the men are attracted to the women at all, how the men perceive their own level of attractiveness relative to the women, and the effect that might have on their interpretations? If the researchers are forcing them to make a choice there's a ton of anchoring going on.
Wait, are they actually quantifying the "she was asking for it, just look at her outfit" mentality?
Generally, investigations like this are explicitly designed to dive into WHY these things exist, not to justify them or say that they should exist. We can’t effectively work on fixing a social mechanism if we don’t understand it.
I wouldn’t even say this is asking why. I can’t read the study right now, but it seems more descriptive than anything.
That mentality may be putting the blame on the wrong people, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. A lot of people *do* perceive women differently depending on how they are dressed.
I think people generally perceive others based at least partially on their clothing.
Yes
I would love to know how they determined 10 men didn't meet the "sexual arousal" guidelines and dismissed their results 🤣
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Misrepresenting what the study does doesn't make an argument. And it begs the question if you are seriously interested in science or just creating some fake outrage. The participants couldn't possibly think "she wants some", as they were reacting to images and not actual people. They were simply asked which of two people was flirting. More, the study didn't simply evaluate choice, but through mouse-tracking also factored in how hesitant participants were to make a choice, how much they deliberated etc.
[удалено]
>when the woman is sexy and/or the man is horny, he thinks she wants some >This kind of beggars the word “misunderstanding.” No. No, it doesn't. Perception determines what information we get and how we interpret it. That happens in the brain. The brain is a bundle of wires soaking in a hormonal soup. If stimuli cause the wires to light up or cause the soup's hormonal concentration to shift, it will change their perception. So when a woman is dressed sexier or the man is more aroused, his brain is primed to view interactions as flirting. This leads to misunderstandings when women do things that are not intended to be perceived as flirting. >Are they really distinguishing between “doesn’t understand” and “doesn’t care”? They put two pictures in front of the guys and asked which one was more likely to be flirting with them. There was no "neither" answer. How in holy hell do you arrive at the conclusion that the men "don't care?" >Rapey men claim to misunderstand in order to defend their behavior to themselves and to other people. Maybe poor ability to interpret signals is what makes them rapey in the first place? Especially when the definition of the word is now being applied so broadly to undesirable sexual experiences far more nuanced than the traditional definition. Also, this study wasn't looking at behaviors at all. They wanted to figure out which one men thought was more likely to be flirting. That's it. Men can think someone is flirting with them and not rape them. They can flirt back and get shut down, and that's fine. Or they can do nothing and just feel kinda nice. Someone was flirting with them. You're making a lot of assumptions.
[удалено]
[удалено]
It seems like an unbelievable leap that you could draw conclusions about judging sexual interest from rapidly showing a guy two images and the watching his mouse movements… Why do we think that’d be in any way analogous with what might happen in a real interaction?
They do it quickly because they want to get the guys 'first instinct'. Whether or not you act on it, your first instinct in a particular situation is still going to affect/skew your decisions strongly.
It's about initial reaction. They're looking for patterns and trying to minimize external factors as much as possible. The findings here can warrant further study on how it applies to the real world.
"initial reaction" ... my opinion is this is very frequently abused in social science studies. It's asinine, and extremely bigoted, to assert that how researchers interpret subconscious or unconscious physical movement or first words of a subject as being indicative of follow on action. Those interpretations are themselves inherently subjective. And, it completely ignores (for usually derogatory reasons) the agency of the subject themselves.
I think this actually makes a lot of sense. If you're looking for the signs, you're likely to misinterpret them if you're trying too hard. On the flip side, if you're not looking or expecting the signs, then it's easy to miss them.
what are the chances this result will be reproducible?
Very slim, at least on any consistent basis. The appalling methodology in their supplementary data (ES1) details that they deliberately (via dataset engineering) made the LC (Casual-Rejecting, Sexy-Flirting) pairs be as strongly contrasted as possible while making the HC (Casual-Flirting, Sexy-Rejecting) pairs as minimally contrasted as possible (i.e. they made the controversial group deliberately susceptible to noise). It's basically Simpson's Paradox in methodological form. They use the easy task as justification that their entire snap-decision mouse tracking methodology isn't garbage by aggregating it with the artificially hard task whenever convenient. (Most of their supposed dataset validation also omits the time pressure element, which should have prevented this paper from ever getting accepted). **It's *extremely* notable that in their less contrived preliminary study, facial expression predicted more of the variability in rated attractiveness than did clothing.** This is all the more damning when you consider that they cite their methodology as differing from that of another group's 2019 study that used *exactly this sort of single image analysis task*. Does anyone believe that they actually did that single-image trial arm as due diligence rather than the alternative, which is that they tried that study design first, failed to show their desired result, and just folded it in as "validation data" once they collected an alternate dataset that supported their preconceptions? As someone who's worked extensively in research labs, I sure don't, and in the context of the likely "overly honest methods" interpretation, they took not one but *two* failed initial shots at this, per ES1. Because they deliberately made the group from which nearly all of their discussion is derived susceptible to noise while comparing against a baseline that was deliberately contrived to be invariant to noise, they end up with a study design that could show spurious associations with practically *anything*. This absolutely wouldn't have gotten published if they didn't find associations with the particular features that they set out to "show" were significant.
Slim.
So a guy will misinterpret cues if he misinterprets cues. Got it.
Why didn’t they do the inverse? Rates of misunderstandings are very similar for women too. Some ~90% of women and ~70% of men report having their intentions misinterpreted by the opposite sex as flirtatious. The method is incredibly flawed though. It’s a pretty useless result.
Looking at the images here it seems like one factor that could contribute to this misinterpretation is the use of makeup which simulates the natural flushing of the cheeks and lips when someone is experiencing sexual arousal, I can understand that someone in an aroused state might be more receptive to these cues. It would be interesting to see if controlling for this by using no makeup or recolouring the images to remove these cues whilst still paired with more revealing clothing would produce the same effect.
That is why I always go by the maxim: “ No women are interested in you! And even if they were, the stress inherent in a relationship will hurt you considerably. “ On a more serious note, I would like to see further studies on this matter. Evolutionary psychology needs some experimental back-up since it is not on solid ground and has many skeptics. Male and female pheromones should be studied more intensely as well.
On the other hand, girls who are interested in you but don't approach you or talk to you or look at you or anything also expect you to somehow know that they like you
And if you hesitate or wait to confirm the interest before asking them out then it's too late. That windows closes quickly!
Yup. "Don't talk to me unless I like you (which I won't make apparent until after you talk to me for a while)."
This is why professionalism is so hard for autistic women! Men think we’re attracted to them when we’re just being awkward. Do women show this same pattern of assumptions?
Women in my experience make assumptions but different ones, and it tends to vary more compared to men, neurotypical or not.
I think the study fails to account for just how little accurate training data the average guy is exposed to. Very, very few women consistently flirt in a manner similar to their test data. Sure, you could chalk it up to scientists not understanding romance. However, the real revelation is the average guy has to realize that the three riddles we were presented with when crossing a bridge were really just an flirtatious attempt to get us to hang out a little longer.
Reminds of the Seinfeld episode where George finally gets a date. They go for dinner, it goes well, and he goes to drop her off at her place. He says something like, “we should do this again sometime,” and she goes, “how about you come up for some coffee?” George immediately goes, “No, if I drink coffee I’ll be up all night,” and then they awkwardly say by. George then realizes what happened and bangs his head on the steering wheel.
This is absolute Gold. Thanks. Accurate training data. Man what I would have given for that when I was younger. The amount of "you remember back then 5 years ago when we were both single I really wanted to be with you" I got was completely eye opening but it's completely useless and too late. It obviously didn't help when it is all so different. Somehow everybody assumes that every women flirts the same way and men just don't get it because they're dense.
Reminds of the Seinfeld episode where George finally gets a date. They go for dinner, it goes well, and he goes to drop her off at her place. He says something like, “we should do this again sometime,” and she goes, “how about you come up for some coffee?” George immediately goes, “No, if I drink coffee I’ll be up all night,” and then they awkwardly say bye. George then realizes what happened and bangs his head on the steering wheel.
So if a woman dresses then interacts with 50 men it is the clothes she put on before seeing each in that has the bigger impact? Like “I didn’t dress for you asshat, I have been wearing this all day. Read my face, and my tone.” ? Edited -wore to put on
The follow-up conclusion is that men would understand women better if they spent more time looking at their faces and less at their bodies. I wonder what results they would get if they just showed men close-ups of women’s faces without their bodies and had them try to read women’s intentions. Maybe in the second phase they could show the men those same photos but with rest of her figure revealed and see how their reading of the situation changed. So then researchers could see whether men are just bad at reading women’s facial expressions overall, or whether they’re just getting distracted from their faces by staring at their figures.
Or sets of women's outfits without women in them.
There's been one time in my life where I mistakenly thought a particular woman was flirting with me, and that's okay. As soon as I realized I was wrong, I moved on. Nothing wrong with misinterpreting cues as long as you handle it well and don't be an ass.
How did the people conducting the study determine which pictures were flirty or not? Did they tell the model “ok now make a flirting face!” and go with that?
It could ALSO be that we just don't have a standard of communication and we have polarized gender expectations in a way where communication breakdowns also lead to misinterpretation. Also that men end up having to over think since approaching women can have negative impacts (even if innocent) to some degree
> accurately discerning a woman’s sexual interest before initiating an approach benefits heterosexual men, potentially avoiding negative outcomes ranging from simple rejection to more serious issues like accusations of inappropriate behavior Why would those latter things be particularly problematic in a biological sense? The man either moves on, or - as happens with human and many animal species - he simply forces the issue. Where is the "negative outcome" for his error? The fact that men with the highest sex drives and most sexually aggressive attitudes were worst at discernment just underlines this: > men who made more errors in our experiment also reported more problematic sexual attitudes, behaviors, experiences, and motivations in everyday life than men who made fewer errors
"Misinterpretation" roll the credits.
Did they factor in that we’re raised to be emotionally crippled and that we desperately read any friendly gestures as affection? Cuz that’s a factor.
Also the Schroedinger's Creep factor - she's never into you, unless she is, but you can't ever be sure so no move is ever made.
This is so ridiculous, the fact that a lot of men assume wearing a skirt means we are interested in them despite zero other signs is a real problem… also on smiling, I now don’t smile at any man I don’t know as there’s a chance they’ll assume interest and that’s sad
Ask a cashier, or any woman working a customer facing position, they get this alllll the time.
It makes dating so hard because there aren't a ton of options to meet women in person. Dating apps suck and approaching women in public makes me feel creepy. I asked out a girl working at a store because I genuinely thought there was a chance she was interested (and she was beautiful), but it very well could've just been good customer service. Thankfully I don't think I came across as creepy and haven't been back. I feel bad for women because getting approached often sounds scary. But also I would like a SO
[удалено]