Slashdot Mirror
Study Shows Males Commonly Mistake Sexual Intent
seattle-pk writes "Males are apparently clueless when it comes to interpreting sexual intent from females, according to a recent study (PDF) from Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Men were found commonly to perceive more sexual intent in women's behavior than women were intending to convey. (A campus survey showed that 68% of college females had an experience where a male mistook signs of friendliness for affection.) However, the study also shows that men were quite likely to misperceive sexual interest as friendliness. 'Rather than seeing the world through sex-colored glasses, men seemed just to have blurry vision of sorts, overall,' according to the article. If you're a male who ever mistook the meaning of a barista's smile, looks like you're not alone."
A barista is the person who makes coffee at a coffee shop. Merriam-Webster defines it.
void
I quote the Live Science article: "More often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on" .
/. summary: Men were found commonly to perceive more sexual intent in women's behavior than women were intending to convey.
Well, actually the study (see findings table, last page of the PDF) shows that 79.9 percent of guys correctly identified friendliness and only 12.1pct mistook it for sexual interest. Sadness and rejection were also correctly interpreted most of the times (and almost never mistaken for sexual interest).
And now I quote the
Wrong again: sexual interest is the only intent that just less than half of the male sample correctly interpreted, with almost 40% of them mistaking it for friendliness.
So it seems that we don't do too bad after all. Of course, this doesn't fly too well with the typical "horny males think all girls 'want some' " stereotypes.
Now, I'd be willing to see the results of the same research, applied to girls. My anecdotal evidence indicates that girls fare even worse than guys at interpreting "sexual interest" signals. My "sexual interest" signals consistently get ignored (maybe I'm just too shy) or, even worse, mistaken for an invitation to be friends and tell me their ex-boyfriend stories (when this happens: run!). I also find that a non-trivial number of girls mistakes friendliness for sexual interest (usually the same ones who think of themselves as hot and intersting).
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Not the programming language, of course! Smalltalk with a girl you like, and if she really likes you, the conversation will go on without any embarrassing pauses. Smalltalk allows us to relax and let ourselves be, and any underlying feelings usually surface.
There are some subtle clues to as if a girl likes you; for example, if, after a long conversation, she starts to touch you. Or if she turns her body towards you while she speaks.
Of course none of the above guarantee 100% that a girl likes you. But it's a good start.
Remember some general principles: be clean, be gentle and polite, show interest in your partner, be sincere.
Also remember that one of the most important feelings for women is the feeling of security: try to make them feel relatively secure; women have a wide spectrum of feelings but they are usually reluctant to show them until they feel nice and welcomed to the person they speak to.
Finally, also remember that for women, sex is more a psychological operation than a physical one. Sex is not the same for the two sexes. Women are mentally and emotionally aroused before physically aroused, so try to care for them!!!
The barista is smiling to get more tips and sell more drinks, and that's all. Don't trust any interest from an employee on the clock in any way.
stuff |
There are a lot of books out there on how to improve your dating life. A lot of those books are even written with geeks in mind, not that description ever fit me or anyone who reads slashdot......*cough* *cough* :).
Be warned, most of these books are poorly written and the web sites where even the good books are sold are styled in a way where it looks like snake oil is being sold.
However, there is a lot of good stuff out there that actually works.
I highly recommend:
1. Renting a copy of the movie "The Tao Of Steve". It is based on the true story of an obese underachiever who develops a method to get all of the dates he wants despite his disadvantages.
2. Read "Without Embarrassment" by Mike Pilinski. Don't buy it from Amazon, it is overpriced by $30 there. Go to the author's web site. The web site is done poorly and looks like snake oil. Don't let that fool you. Pilinski was one of us, and his book is one of the good ones. You can get the book as an ebook or printed on demand. You have to look around on the site a bit to find the later option.
If you want to read more after this I would start with the "The Game" by Neil Strauss. The author is a professional writer and it shows. Despite the size the book will read like it is only 100 pages. It is very captivating and the book is an excellent overview of the "PUA Community" ( Pickup Artist Community ). This is very valuable, because even the good authors have bogus looking web sites that make it hard to get a good idea of what their products are like.
This wikipedia page also serves as a good overview. Most of the "literature" on this subject falls into about 4 sets of approaches with many, MANY copycats. This page will give you the bottom line -- without having to read a lot of marketing crap -- on each prominent system. I recommend watching the movie and reading "Without Embarrassment" first though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_Community
How's high school?
I have aplenty of female friends I have absolutely zero interest in ever fucking.
And amusingly enough, I have aplenty of female friends I find attractive who have zero interest in fucking me.
Article.
The whole article is on the first page, but the comments are spread across five (the same article appears on all of them). I'll leave finding those as an exercise for the reader.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
All too often the two sexes are reduced to simple stereotypes in these sorts of discussions, it's rather irritating. Guys are perceived as wanting to do anything that moves, even though those types of people are rather rare in reality. Glad to see someone here is actually living in the real world rather than some imaginary one.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Well, I *was*, up until I found that your Transformer collection lacked a Devil Gigatron. What *were* you thinking?
Go for my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you!
You can't take the sky from me...
It gets worse. Women are multi-threading.
proud caffeine whore
hahahahahahaha! Women who 'just' want to be friendly as they walk by?
I fall into the 'gentle buffoon' category in first impressions and while most blokes on the street will say 'g'day' back, women give you this dirty look like 'how dare you think to speak to me...' or at best a weak smile that says 'get me outa here!'. Once they get to know me, none seem to have the initial reservations they emanated at first. I have observed this not just with myself but many other genuinely gentle and kind blokes. Even my wife still will tell me about a bloke she saw that 'scared' her -- all they said was 'hello, how are you?'. I later come across the fellow and they are almost always harmless and gentle, but they always fall on the plain and poor side.
How do I know I fall into the 'gentle buffoon'? Other than the adults I know telling me directly, kids take to me quite quickly -- consistently, everywhere. I'm forever being the recipient of children's simple genuine friendly smile.
Having also observed others, this trend is a given. Handsome or rich, women flock to you. Plain and poor, you have to work at it very hard. The easiest route is being conventionally quirky or funny. This has worked time, and time again including for my wife, who is still as bad as the rest of the women.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Quite easy, just move to a muslim country and get a harem.
Muslim women are not jealous by nature, I discovered this after talking to a couple of moroccan girls I met, who told me they viewed jealousness as being selfish, and that men should have freedom.
Women are more indirect, and use indirect methods of gaining and employing power. Men use more direct means.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.