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."

Comments

From the No Duh Dept.

[Tablizer]

Is this from the same study group that found males like beer?

"She slapped me, that means she wants my bod!"

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[MrNaz]

Nothing says "I Love You" like a restraining order.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[Hatta]

When did /. turn into Redbook?

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[foniksonik]

Actually sometimes it does. In high school there was a girl who ran up to me tried to steal my pepsi and when I wouldn't give it to her she slapped me.

I found out weeks later that she was actually trying to tell me she liked me???? in high school... I thought that kind of thing was left behind in grade school... who knew?

So yes, sometimes a girl slapping you really does mean she wants your bod.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[andreyvul]

Frailty, thy name is woman. Please quote Shakespeare correctly: thy != they.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[MrNaz]

Getting a quote wrong and then urging me to "Remember this" is kinda ironic.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[rthille]

Not sure why your post was moderated insightful. Funny maybe. Slashdot it news for nerds. That's why a _scientific_ study about human behavior is interesting here. Redbook is (as I am slightly aware of it) unlikely to be publishing scientific information about human behavior. Likely they'd be publishing whatever they thought would most appeal to their readership.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[racermd]

I have no scientific data to back this up, but things like that are more common than you think.

In High School, I had a similar incident where a girl in our small group of friends started to hit me at random times. I later found out that she liked me and that was her way of trying to tell me. I've been told that younger girls tend to do this as a way of 'fitting in' with the guys (since their view of guys is that they do this to one another and apparently enjoy it).

And in response to the article in the OP: In the last couple of decades, guys have had to deal with feminism - some of it pretty extreme. An example from my personal experiences, I tend to hold doors for people - guys AND gals - if they're near enough that I'm not going out of my way (golden rule). I once did this for a young woman once (I don't exactly recall where or when), but she intentionally went through another door (that she opened herself) and scolded me that she doesn't need help. The undertone there was that she wouldn't accept my gesture of courtesy because I was male. Due to that one instance, I've pretty much stopped holding doors for people (unless they're really going to need help with the door, i.e.: arms full of stuff). I will hold the door open a little longer as I go through it if I notice someone following, but that's about it.

That example was an extreme way of illustrating that men are continually getting mixed messages about what's acceptable and what's not, which may help explain why "men were quite likely to misperceive sexual interest as friendliness." In certain scenarios, a simple misinterpretation can lead to loss of employment or even a lawsuit. For that reason, I suspect, guys will tend to play it safe and interpret everything in purely platonic terms.

Personally, I'm mildly outraged that (some) women do this - my wife included. If women want men to read the signals properly, we need to know the rules and they need to be consistent. It's manipulative, sneaky, underhanded, and just plain unfair. I feel like I'm playing by a constantly-changing set of rules (Calvinball, anyone?). If that's going to be the case, I refuse the play the game. Because that's all it is - a game. I don't like playing games with people's emotions and I REALLY don't like people playing with mine. /Soapbox

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[Jane_Dozey]

Personally I appreciate it when men are a little bit chivalrous and do things like holding the door open for me. I don't mean going way out of their way to get to the door and open it but holding it open and giving me a smile always brightens my day.

I hate when girls take every polite action from men as an oppressive action. They really do spoil it for the rest of us and let's face it, they're being plain rude.

Please, don't let the actions of a few girls stop you from doing what you think is polite/a nice thing to do. There really are some crazy ones out there who convince themselves they're really that important that every guy wants to take advantage of them, then there are the rest of us who take it as a friendly action and will appreciate it for what it is.

Ok, on the whole sneaky, manipulative, underhanded thing: we're all (girls) guilty of this. This is how women interact with each other as well. That doesn't make it right but I'm afraid we can't always see that we're doing it so from my whole gender: sorry. Being a CS student and surrounded by men for the majority of my days I've become a little more understanding of the difficulties I can pose when I'm not being clear but it's kinda hard to stop doing it all together.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[Zibblsnrt]

I once did this for a young woman once (I don't exactly recall where or when), but she intentionally went through another door (that she opened herself) and scolded me that she doesn't need help. The undertone there was that she wouldn't accept my gesture of courtesy because I was male. Due to that one instance, I've pretty much stopped holding doors for people (unless they're really going to need help with the door, i.e.: arms full of stuff). I will hold the door open a little longer as I go through it if I notice someone following, but that's about it.

I'm curious as to why you'd abandon a decent enough practice because of one encounter with one asshole.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[eugene ts wong]

A woman on Slashdot admitting that women are fallible? Wow...talk about dispelling 2 myths with 1 post.

Seriously, though, you know for a fact that women play games with each other with confusing rules, in the same manner that they play with us? Seriously?!?

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[IKILLEDTROTSKY]

I had a similar thing happen when i offered to let a girl go in front of me in line. I just told her it was obvious she wanted my bod and she obviously was offended to cover up the fact the she was getting wet just talking to me.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[jonadab]

> Being a CS student and surrounded by men for the majority of my days I've
> become a little more understanding of the difficulties I can pose when
> I'm not being clear but it's kinda hard to stop doing it all together.

As a man who majored in computer science when I was in school, I think I am on safe ground saying that _on average_ (though there is a lot of variation in individuals), male CS students are going to tend to have an even harder time reading non-verbal cues than the male population in general. It's also true that the male population in at large has a harder time with it, on average, then the female population.

Many of us are *aware* of the fact that we don't really "get" non-verbal communication. But that doesn't make us any better at it. (Some of us have learned to partially compensate by asking clarifying questions. You may encounter this -- a guy asking questions that _seem_ unnecessary and the answers obvious, basically asking you to confirm aspects of what you just said. Please try not to be too annoyed. When this happens, there's an excellent chance that the guy doing this has had bad experiences in the past with people getting mad at him because he thought he understood what they said but missed some nuance he was supposed to have read between the lines.)

So yeah, if you want to be really sure we understand what you're getting at, generally the most surefire way to do that is to double-check that every part of what you're saying was actually expressed in the _words_ that you said. Use words. Words, of course, still can be misunderstood. But on the whole your chances of getting your point across successfully are better with words than with any other method, especially if you are talking to men, and extra-especially if they're also computer geeks.

I suppose it's probably annoying to have to say everything in words all the time. Then again, there's no real need to bother with it except when you actually care about being understood ;-)

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[fractoid]

Personally, I'm mildly outraged that (some) women do this - my wife included. If women want men to read the signals properly, we need to know the rules and they need to be consistent. It's manipulative, sneaky, underhanded, and just plain unfair. I feel like I'm playing by a constantly-changing set of rules (Calvinball, anyone?). If that's going to be the case, I refuse the play the game. Because that's all it is - a game. I don't like playing games with people's emotions and I REALLY don't like people playing with mine. /Soapbox I can't help but agree with you here. It seems to me that (while they would obviously never admit this) many women deliberately give insincere come-on signals in order to get attention and/or get non-sex-related things that they want. It's the classic case of the hot cheerleader giving the nerdy guy a big smile then asking him to do her homework - she's obviously never going to be interested in him but she'll pretend so for personal gain.

It's a smidgen different if it's someone you're in a long term relationship with. But still, women like being admired, and they like being wanted. What sometimes makes this awkward is that they like these things independently of liking sex, and it can get frustrating when one's partner wants to feel desirable (and so deliberately works up some sexual tension) but isn't actually interested in sex.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[solferino]

Personally, I'm mildly outraged that (some) women do this - my wife included. If women want men to read the signals properly, we need to know the rules and they need to be consistent. It's manipulative, sneaky, underhanded, and just plain unfair. I feel like I'm playing by a constantly-changing set of rules (Calvinball, anyone?). If that's going to be the case, I refuse the play the game. Because that's all it is - a game. I don't like playing games with people's emotions and I REALLY don't like people playing with mine.

It's not a game, it's war. War between the sexes which has been going on since sexual reproduction began. Neither side ever gets the upper hand. In regard to the human species I happen to think the battle has been pretty even for at least the last several millennia (contrary to what feminists will tell you).

Now human females are particularly good on picking up and putting out subtle communication clues. That's one of their superior weapons and they are unlikely to give it up.

Of course, you can choose to step outside the 'game', which can be a noble calling. But then of course, you're no longer a player. And as you mentioned a wife it doesn't sound like you've made this choice.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[SilverJets]

Ok, on the whole sneaky, manipulative, underhanded thing: we're all (girls) guilty of this. This is how women interact with each other as well. That doesn't make it right but I'm afraid we can't always see that we're doing it so from my whole gender: sorry.

A perfect example of this (and I am not being a pig) is women in management. Get two or more women in power positions in the same department or company and watch the fur fly...literally. Everything they do to one another is on a personal level. With men it is different. Sure the guy down the hall just backstabbed you but its business its not personal. Not so with women backstabbing women. My old boss actually moved my entire department to a different building because she couldn't get along with another female department head.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[Wiseman1024]

You've typed two spaces between "man" and "geek".

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[Eivind Eklund]

Check out "He said, she said" by Deborah Tannen for background information on how men and women communicate.

Women are more indirect, and use indirect methods of gaining and employing power. Men use more direct means.

Eivind.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[pragma_x]

If women want men to read the signals properly, we need to know the rules and they need to be consistent.

(The following is entirely IMO, and backed purely upon several years of marriage and observation)

The problem is that in order for this to happen, society and women in general need to audit each other's behavior to the point where abberant, malign, or ambiguous behavior simply is't tolerated. Given what I do understand about how women work amongst each other, they're more likely to simply let one another screw up than help or intercede thanks to a very agresssive competitive instinct.

From what I've seen, it's actually worth a girl's time to let her peers fail at dating, then spend any effort ensuring that everyone has a fair shot. This is due to the fact that while it's easy for a woman to get a guy, it's considerably harder to find and *keep* one that's actually worth keeping. So there's a percieved scarcity that undercuts most efforts at cooperation, when it comes to dating and mating.

I feel like I'm playing by a constantly-changing set of rules (Calvinball, anyone?).

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that there are several rulebooks with conflicting rules at work: social, religious, sub-cultural and instinctive biases all come into play at varying degrees from person to person. The "feminism vs traditional social mores" is just the tip of the iceberg here - try dating a rebelling goth who was raised Catholic, or a born-again christian from a single-parent family. So you never know what someone's particular bias twoard sex, sexuality, dating, romance and commitment is going to be (kind of like DnD character sheets I guess) until you get to know them.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[Shotgun]

Of course, you can choose to step outside the 'game', which can be a noble calling. But then of course, you're no longer a player. And as you mentioned a wife it doesn't sound like you've made this choice.

Marriage doesn't mean you have to play.

- She say, "...but I wanted..." I say, "Well, you should have told me so." When she tells me what she wants, she gets it.
- She acts like she wants to, but then falls asleep or manipulates the situation so that the act is impossible to carry out. The next time she acts like she wants to, I ignore her. She gets upset. I remind her how she feel asleep or called friends over at the last minute the last time.

The bullshit only continues because men let it.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[geminidomino]

The bullshit only continues because men let it. Amen. Part of the stereotypical "geek" mindset towards women is that, when they get one, they tend to overcompensate to try and keep her. In an attempt to keep this woman from thinking they made an error in judgement, they turn themselves into doormats.

Have a spine and don't take crap off of them. Either they'll treat you like a human being, or they'll ditch you for someone they can bully. In the latter case, the pussy isn't worth living like that anyway.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[Grishnakh]

Yep, my wife complains about the same thing in regards to other women. She says that's why she doesn't have very many female friends. She used to work as a legal secretary, and has all kinds of horror stories about the "bitches" she used to work with in law offices, and all the sneaky, underhanded things they did to each other. And that's just the other secretaries, who were underlings; she has even worse things to say about the attorneys, most especially the female attorneys.

She's now in school as a helicopter pilot, and she's much happier. According to her, everyone is so much more direct with everything, including the other female students and instructors. So, again according to her, it seems that females in general tend to use very sneaky, underhanded tactics in getting things they want (which is really very evil if you think about it), but this doesn't apply to all women of course, and that the worst ones seem to gravitate towards certain professions (like law), and the best ones gravitate towards other professions (like pilots, engineering, science, etc.). Incidentally, she's also been very happy with the lesbian females she's had to work with, saying they tend to act a lot more like men, being very direct in their communications.

It sounds to me like women for some reason aren't given any instruction on how to treat people when they're little girls, and develop some really horrible habits. For us boys, many of us did things like Boy Scouts, where we learned good morals and how to behave properly. Girls don't seem to have such a thing; Girl Scouts exists, but it's pretty lame compared to Boy Scouts, and not many girls go into it compare to Boy Scouts. Instead, parents seem happy to just let them grow up and develop without any real structure in their lives aside from attending school, so they spend all their spare time watching TV or having sleep-overs at their friends, until they're old enough to go to college and major in MRS.

Re:From the No Duh Dept.

[pcgabe]

An example from my personal experiences, I tend to hold doors for people - guys AND gals - if they're near enough that I'm not going out of my way (golden rule). I once did this for a young woman once (I don't exactly recall where or when), but she intentionally went through another door (that she opened herself) and scolded me that she doesn't need help. The undertone there was that she wouldn't accept my gesture of courtesy because I was male. Due to that one instance, I've pretty much stopped holding doors for people

A very similar incident happened to me. I'd imagine it happens to most guys that hold open doors.

I still hold open doors though. Because, fuck her. I'm not going to let her malignant attitude affect me. Perhaps she should wear a sign that says "I'm a bitch, and I don't respond well to kindness."

Of course, I just smiled and shrugged and didn't say any of that to her. What would be the point? To hurt her or embarrass her? I couldn't possibly say anything that would hurt her as much as her attitude will.

wrong

[spoop]

women have blurry behavior

Re:wrong

[Meekuu]

... and men are simple beigns. It doesn't matter if the woman sends any signals. If she's pretty and witty he's intersted. If she's ugly and witty he ONLY wants to be her friend. If she's ugly and stupid he doesn't know her.

Re:wrong

[MisterSchmoo]

Didn't you watch "When Harry Met Sally" we want to bang the ugly ones too.

Re:wrong

[bounty_hunter.poland]

We do?! Ye gods, i didn't know!

Re:wrong

[interstellar_donkey]

Wait . . .

Are you saying that the cute bartender, the one who laughs at all my horrible jokes and cleans up after me after I get really drunk and spill my beer everywhere, the one that I constantly tip very well . . . are you trying to tell me that she might not actually be into me?

Re:wrong

[AlecLyons]

Didn't you watch "When Harry Met Sally"

No.

Re:wrong

[rve]

... whereas women can overlook ugly and stupid, as long as he's rich?

Ug!

Re:wrong

[CRCulver]

... whereas women can overlook ugly and stupid, as long as he's rich?

Your point reminds me of the flap over the book The Game , where journalist Neil Strauss uncovered a secret world of men who make picking up women a science. Just take a look at the war in the Amazon reviews and in their attached comments. Women attack users of The Game for only going after beautiful (and unthreateningly dumb) women, and men respond that women do the same thing in only going after men with superficial qualities or large checkbooks. But if you actually read The Game as a chronicle of investigation instead of as a manual for picking up women, you realize that both are wrong. Meeting someone you are going to be interested in for the long-term, as opposed to one night of sex, means seeking out those qualities that might initially turn you off.

Re:wrong

[Knutsi]

Street wisdom: Ugly girls wants nice boys. Pretty girls want rich boys.

Those in the middle swing both ways. This is also called "land of possibilities" ;p

Re:wrong

[Cylix]

And now you know and knowing is half the battle. G.I. Hoe!

Re:wrong

[Kjella]

... whereas women can overlook ugly and stupid, as long as he's rich? As opposed to men? Granted, there's not that many women rich enough to be gold digging for but if you're some ugly, stupid billionaire's daughter I doubt they have problems finding men...

Re:wrong

[cayenne8]

"Didn't you watch "When Harry Met Sally" we want to bang the ugly ones too."

Of course....that's where the old joke came from...

"What do fat girls and mopeds have in common?

--They're both fun to ride, but, you don't want your friends to see you on either one of them..."

Re:wrong

[Opportunist]

Nonono. When she's pretty and witty, he wants to fuck her and go steady. When she is ugly and witty, he wants to fuck her and stay her friend. When she is ugly and stupid, he wants to fuck her and then move on. Unless she gives good head.

Re:wrong

[cayenne8]

"But if you actually read The Game as a chronicle of investigation instead of as a manual for picking up women, you realize that both are wrong. Meeting someone you are going to be interested in for the long-term, as opposed to one night of sex, means seeking out those qualities that might initially turn you off."

That is assuming you would for some reason want something long term. I suppose if you want to have kids, then yes, a long term relationship is required. But, if you don't want any....no need to long term interest. If I want friendship, I turn to my friends, 99% of which are guys. I like women for getting laid, but, other than that....they pretty much are foreign beings.

But really....I can't imagine being stuck with the same person to sleep with the rest of my life...after awhile I'm ready to trade for a 'newer model'....half the fun is the chase anyway.

Re:wrong

[cayenne8]

"Oh c'mon, don't tell me that doesn't work for men, too. I mean, tell me you don't wanna be Paris' next husband."

If she didn't have that much money, she'd still get laid VERY easily. Many guys out there think she's pretty hot looking. And from the sex tapes...she seems to know what she's doing.

Re:wrong

[Mjolniir]

Amen. It is so typical that the language of this seems to say the problem lies with men, but the fact is that women often flirt to gain more favorable treatment, etc., but then somehow expect men NOT to think they have a sexual intent. This makes it difficult to tell when a woman is flirting because she wants you, or flirting because she wants something FROM you.

Re:wrong

[IdleTime]

The problem with the article was at the end of it. It stated something to the effect of "men can learn.." Ok, but what about women? Are men the only ones that needs to learn something here? Wouldn't it be better if both learned?

And how do one find this out? Now, I've had my fair share of women and more than so over the years but hearing the results from the study lead me to think about how do people learn how to interpret the other sex intentions? The answer is: we don't! Why? Because anything that tastes or smells like it is sexually related, is absent from any form of education. Until we can talk about sexuality and attraction in a decent form in schools and in media and educate young people, this will continue to be a problem. Cue the religious nutcases who get their pants in a bunch just over the thought of sex and education.

Re:wrong

[cayenne8]

"Or rather, men and women just use somewhat different codes. There need not to be anything blurry on either side."

Well, with men, it is pretty easy. If a man is talking to a woman, hell...if he even is LOOKING at her, he is interested in having sex with her. Very simple.

Women? Who the hell knows. Some are nice in that they are pretty upfront about sexual interest...but they are in the small minority.

I guess it is hard for some guys, because there are NO subtle signs a man wants a women for sex...because any women we pay attention to, we want sex with. For some reason, women don't seem to want it quite as badly...otherwise, they'd not be so damned coy trying to send subtle signals, which are completely lost on males. If a woman is sexually interested in a guy....just grab his dick and kiss him....he'll understand that as a clear sign. And again....girls, if he is talking to you...he is interested. We're not gonna waste our time talking to women we are not interested in taking to bed.

Re:wrong

[sco08y]

And the women even have a book of their own on that subject, so it's a bit hypocritical of them to complain about men "cheating"... ;)

Just one? Have you ever been to a supermarket checkout?

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:wrong

[Metasquares]

Not everyone approaches relationships in the same way. I was looking for a relationship that had emotional and intellectual depth, which required a very rare sort of woman. It took me nearly a decade, but now that I've found her, I can't imagine being with anyone else.

Re:wrong

[Opportunist]

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm getting old. After a few hours of sex, I'm kinda bored with it and I want to do something else. Like, say, start some sort of communication. I mean, in a relationship I'd expect a bit of that, too. You know, for the stuff you can't tell your buddies or the things they don't care about, like your feelings. And somehow I think dear Paris isn't quite the person I'd want to have that kind of conversation with. OTOH, I don't care too much about shoes, shopping and little dogs that are more suitably cathegorized as rats, so I think the topics for discussion would be somewhat limited.

Personally, I don't find her too attractive. I'm the type of guy that looks a bit beyond looks (ok, there are limits... but generally), and behind the pretty front there's a big nothing, as far as I can tell. I'm also the type of person that wants to have a relationship that doesn't end at the edge of the bed (and no, I don't mean that I also want to fuck in the closet or on the couch).

Re:wrong

[Eggplant62]

No, it's only just slightly more complex:

If a woman's pretty, then he really, really wants to have sex with her but has no idea how to get from "Hi" to "Let's fuck." There's everything about timing--when's the right time to ask?

As a male gets older sometimes this gets easier, but most remain incoherent as to the little signals that a woman might learn to drop by the time she's past age 30. If the woman would just open her yap and at least say something tangible about the subject instead of hinting around and playing hide and seek with the Secret Snail, things would get a whole lot easier.

If she's ugly and intelligent and witty or slightly ditzy but not intolerably idiotic, then he'd be her friend but might get more interested if she would open up about her wild penchant for oral sex or something else that might get more than wondering looks out of the guy. Ugly women need lovin' too, and most of them have all the right equipment that guys shouldn't ignore. I don't know about other guys, but unless they're really brutally ugly, I'm still wondering what they'd be like in the sack.

If she's ugly and stupid then he doesn't want to know her.

Re:wrong

[cp.tar]

Oh c'mon, don't tell me that doesn't work for men, too. I mean, tell me you don't wanna be Paris' next husband.

Believe it or not, I would not marry her.

Hell, I would hardly be able to be in the same room with her for any length of time, especially if she actually spoke.

Re:wrong

[nizo]

See here is the problem: women give ambiguous signals, while men don't. But wait: men are the ones with the problem. For those of us men who are married, is this starting to sound at all familiar???

Re:wrong

[bhtooefr]

Funny, except we're not innocent in the whole giving off ambiguous signals thing...

Of course, we only do it because being obvious about it is considered a turnoff, or sometimes because of fear of rejection...

Re:wrong

[MISSBEHAVING]

Not all women are gold digging hoes. In my experience men do often misinterpret the signals given by women. I learned to just be clear about it. Nothing says I am interested like leaning forward enough to brush against him, whisper in his ear something, and smiling. On the other hand, flirting can be fun and its healthy for you. The main problem, as my geek partner says, is that most men are not confident enough to catch the correct signs nor do they pay enough attention to the subtleties that women put out there. So women...just be blatant and save everyone the trouble. ;p

Re:wrong

[Foobar of Borg]

Believe it or not, I would not marry her. Hell, I would hardly be able to be in the same room with her for any length of time, especially if she actually spoke.

No kidding. Apart from being rich, she looks and acts like trailer park trash. The people who think she is hot are probably also the ones who think Ann Coulter is hot. Ye Gods! What is the world coming to?

Re:wrong

[dpilot]

Let's revisit this when you hit your late 40's.

or for another answer...

Think of it as evolution in action.

Re:wrong

[nizo]

I am beginning to think that if men were as ambiguous as women, we would go extinct as a species.

Re:wrong

[ubuwalker31]

Yes, Yes, YES, YES!

Re:wrong

[Jarjarthejedi]

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.

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Or because any indication of interest in various places (the workplace, etc.) might be considered harassment, especially when the women don't want it, but are trying to be subtle about it (and us dense males don't pick up on that).

It goes both ways too, certainly. Usually girls are rather frustrated when they find out I've liked them for a while, because we were both giving off ambiguous signals neither had picked up on. It's happened at least three times to me that we were both ambiguous and didn't realize it (and that's only the girls I've actually managed to get past that stage with and then talk about it with).

Re:wrong

[mfnickster]

You missed the obvious conclusion:

In order to interpret the results, these researchers must know which signs indicate sexual interest in females!

...and they're not telling. :-P

Re:wrong

[cayenne8]

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm getting old. After a few hours of sex, I'm kinda bored with it and I want to do something else."

Well, you know the definition of an eternity don't you? It is that unbearable period of time between when you cum and she leaves....

:-)

Re:wrong

[dgatwood]

Personally, I don't find her physically attractive, much less attractive overall. Different guys have different taste in attractiveness. If there were a universal definition of beauty, we'd all be going after one particular subset of the women in the population and the species would die off pretty quickly from lack of genetic diversity. In fact, I rather suspect our definition of attractiveness depends largely on maximizing genetic diversity. That's why many people are interested in other people who look as different as possible. Sometimes society constrains this along racial or geopolitical bounds, but we still tend to push the boundaries as much as is possible/practical.

For example, I can't think of any supermodels that I find attractive. Their features tend to be too severe, they tend to be too tall, etc. I find them relatively boring. Give me someone who looks more like Jewel Staite or Jennifer Garner any day. Others will disagree with me on all counts. And that's the fundamental design of the system.

Re:wrong

[Reziac]

I had a related thought: What about all the women who misinterpret everything guys do as being sexual, even when it's not? Or who are completely clueless about when a guy IS being sexual? I think I've seen more of these issues than I have of guys misreading girls' signals.

And remember how popular it's become to scream "SEXUAL HARASSMENT" about even the most innocent behaviours -- and notice that the "WTF? how is THAT harrassment?" meter leans WAY over into the female camp, even in situations where women have roughly equal power with men.

As the lead post in this thread said -- I'm not so sure it's male misinterpretation as often as it's fuzzy female signals, AND females who have exaggerated (either too sexual or not sexual enough) interpretations of male signals.

Re:wrong

[Lemmy Caution]

Money is stability and resources for a child, at least in modern societies.

If you want to get completely evolutionary-psychological about it, women want attractive, confident and strong men as fathers for their children. And wealthy, gentle and patient men to raise them. Sometimes, they are even the same man.

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you underestimate the subtlety of your signals. If someone brushes against me, I usually assume it was accidental and say, "excuse me." Smiles are useless; too many possible meanings. Like I have this ridiculous beard (its a "work in progress"), so lots of people smile when they look at me. (Some even point and laugh. Children are scared. But I digress ;)

Whispering something in my ear is a pretty good one, depending on what you say. "Hey, wanna go make out?" would certainly get my attention, and I probably wouldn't misinterpret it. Though for clarification I might respond, "Maybe. Who with?" ;)

Blatant is certainly better. No chick has every gotten me by being subtle. I'm way too clueless for that. I don't think it has so much to do with a lack of confidence, but rather a lack of socialization. I spent way too much of my adolescence in front of a computer screen instead of outside flirting with girls. Now 20 years later, I barely talk to people. I have the confidence to walk up and introduce myself; I just don't know how to have conversations. For me everything boils down to problem solving, so if someone asks me a question my answers tend toward closure. My "goal" is to solve the conversation (ie. find its ending).

I suppose I could just change my goal to trying to see how long I can just keep talking on and on about nothing. You know, like women. ;)

(clearly I'm missing something.)

Re:wrong

[BorgCopyeditor]

I want to do something else. Like, say, start some sort of communication. I mean, in a relationship I'd expect a bit of that, too.

Pervert.

Re:wrong

[Cid Highwind]

The people who think she is hot are probably also the ones who think Ann Coulter is hot.

Well, he wouldn't be bad-looking if he would just quit wearing all that makeup and get a haircut...

Re:wrong

[dpilot]

By the time you're in your 40's many of your peers will have married and have families, already. Nor will those be (just) babies, they'll be into Scouts, sports, band and chorus, Odyssey of the Mind, etc. (Trying to be P.C. and hit kids' activities for everyone.) At that point if you're still single, you're disconnected from a major port of the interests of a large part of your peer group. Or to put it another way, many of the people I associate with also have families. Interestingly enough, your kids give you another way to meet more people - the parents of their friends. (They've met the kids of our friends, too.) Don't knock it till you've tried it.

There's also a secondary goal - to hit grandparenthood while I still have enough energy to really enjoy it. My wife's and my parents were really all too old for much of this. Kids can be a blast, and a lot of stress and angst. Grandparenthood offers a chance to enjoy it again, knowing that you've survived it once, and can focus more on the good parts.

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm almost 40. A few years ago I got a dog, and now I can't imagine trying to raise kids. And "being a grandparent" has never even occurred to me. Its not even a blip on my radar; my radar isn't even configured to look for it. Honestly responding to your post is the first time I've ever in my life that I've given grandparenthood even this small amount of thought (though now that I'm thinking about it, its kind of intriguing). I guess I'm just wired differently than you.

I'm curious. Have you always wanted to be a grandparent, or did grandparenthood become a "secondary goal" of yours *after* you had kids? I wonder that if I were to have kids, would I also eventually want to be a grandparent, or is the "grandparent gene" something I don't have.

Re:wrong

[earlymon]

Women are simpler than men. If they look back or talk back, they're interested, too.

What? You think that women don't get you're interested? You think they lack this insight?

Dude - the reason you can't get women to say yes and grab your dick is because women don't say yes - they only say no.

You had them at hello. After that, YOU talked your way out of the deal. You think THEY want to talk to you if their not interested?

It's really that simple. Sorry to be the one to break the news to you - but look at it this way: now you know.

Re:wrong

[CastrTroy]

To further prove that point, only from a different angle, here's my story. I'm married and have 2 kids and I'm only 27. None of my long time friends have kids, and most them aren't even close to being married. I feel there's a huge disconnect when I see them. We don't really share much of the same interests anymore, and don't see eachother very often.

Re:wrong

[popmaker]

I do actually think that geeks, and other similar (mostly male, seemingly) types have the tendency to want one woman only. I don't know, when I fall for someone I find it hard to focus on any other one. I stop "looking around" - I'm simply not interested. This might be a huge problem because when you get rejected it hurts so much more, but it might in the end (as seems to have been your case) be a very good quality. And those "false signals" can actually get a guy like me in pretty deep, even though there was nothing behind it.

I think it has something to do with focus, and that slightly obsessive mentality that is necessary to be able to do the kind of work geeks (and similar types) do. This is in opposition to those "stupid, STUPID, scatter-brained jerks that seem to get all the pretty ones and have the attention span of a housefly and the intelligence of a jellyfish" (sorry 'bout, that, I couldn't help it). Yes, they end up with having sex with a lot of women, but they also often seem to be unable to truly appreciate them.

Of course I'm a little biased here, but I hope my two cents are worth something. Also, men are stupid jerks usually. But we know that in so many things men and women are equal. After all, each make up about 50% of the poplulation. So it is actually with some satisfaction that I declare women to be stupid jerks also. It never ceases to amaze me how often they simply don't KNOW what they are doing to those poor guys they are leading on. It's not just about men reading too much into things, it's also women failing to realize what effect they can have. Or, in some cases, misusing those powers for their own gain.

Am I being too cynical? A little misanthropic even? Well, hell, at least SOME of it is justified.

Re:wrong

[CSMatt]

So women...just be blatant and save everyone the trouble. ;p Save your breath. There are no women on Slashdot.

Re:wrong

[MISSBEHAVING]

oh ok. in that case. consider me an alien. :) seeing as how you obviously cant detect one. j/k. lol

Re:wrong

[Eli Gottlieb]

I'll have what he's having!

Re:wrong

[MISSBEHAVING]

agreed. women do tend to talk sometimes for the sake of talking. in my studies towards my degree I am finding that a lot of people with socializing problems gravitate naturally towards computer interaction more so than social real world interactions. I only say this because my partner points this out in his own peers. They are simply more comfortable. I also have found that there is a high incidence of people with autism/asperger's that are more comfortable in the online world (dont take offense to this just making a point). Perhaps some of the activities they use to build social skills might help. Often signals are misread, its either a failure to be clear enough or a failure to interpret. There is no real solution except to be clear and concise in what your desires and expectations are.

Re:wrong

[cayenne8]

"I do actually think that geeks, and other similar (mostly male, seemingly) types have the tendency to want one woman only. I don't know, when I fall for someone I find it hard to focus on any other one. I stop "looking around" - I'm simply not interested. This might be a huge problem because when you get rejected it hurts so much more, but it might in the end (as seems to have been your case) be a very good quality. And those "false signals" can actually get a guy like me in pretty deep, even though there was nothing behind it."

I think it has a lot to do with guys being shy...especially geekier types, and once you do finally get some pussy, it is the best thing is the world and you don't want to risk giving it up, so you basically focus on the one girl, and often, do the wrong things. You cater to her every whim, do what ever you can to be nice and follow along so you don't piss her off where she might cut it off. And that is the wrong thing to do...as that she will not respect you, and then WILL often dump you.

You have to be a little aloof, and be in charge...and let it be known (although it can be unsaid) that you won't take shit off her very much, because there is plenty of others out there. If they know they have you...then you lose the game...and they don't respect you. I'm not saying you have to be an asshole...but, don't be pussywhipped... Being a little big of a jerk often is required, how many times do we see asshole guys, that are constantly getting laid by good looking chicks? I think somewhere down deep, they are a little masochistic by nature of their DNA, I don't know any other way to explain it.

I used to be the classic "good guy"...and it always failed. I became a 'friend'...and didn't get any. Or....I got stomped on by girls I did date...

I saw how friends of mine acted, that got the girl and had them following them. Once I started trying to act a bit more like that (and it was NOT in my nature)...I started having much more luck.

Don't forget...there are plenty of girls out there, and these days..MORE and more of them are willing to sleep with you than ever before at any time with the possible exception of the 60's when "the pill" hit....

So, don't get stuck on 'one' girl. Try to hit as many of them as possible...and if by chance you do want kids and family...then along the way, you will find one you want, but, don't just try for one, and settle on the first one or two that gives it to you.

Re:wrong

[cayenne8]

"By the time you're in your 40's many of your peers will have married and have families, already. "

I've got some friends that have been married and have kids, but, that doesn't keep them at home every day/night. I have one friend, that has had a standing rule since marriage, that Friday night...is his to go and do as he pleases. 99% of the time, he comes out to hang with me and other guys. He isn't ever about to cheat, but, that is his night to get out of the house. He still does this even past having kids. I have other married friends...sure, they kinda disappeared when kids first came out..but, once old enough to not need 24/7 attention..the come out to 'play' still. They also have single girls they know that I get to meet too....so, it isn't like marriage and kids have to be the 'death' of a social life.

You can't be pussywhipped when you get married...have a little backbone, and demand some time for yourself...it works, I just dunno why more men seem to lose their spine once they get hitched. Your life doesn't have to disappear.

Also...I get along with just about any age group. I don't look old, don't look my age. Maybe that has to do with not having the stress and strife of having kids...I noticed most of my friends that got married turned grey faster after marriage...and lost hair quick after the kids came....hehehe. But seriously...I make friends of people older than I...my age, and I'm always making friends with people younger than me. I think that keeps me younger at mind too. You are as old as you feel my friend.

I'm not saying your life has anything wrong with it....just that it is not something I've aspired to have. I like my free time, my expendable cash, freedom to travel, buy a motorcycle (all of this withOUT asking 'permission'), and do as I please. Everyone has to do what they like, but, life is way too short to not do what makes you feel good and makes you happy. Your route isn't for everyone...and it is not hard to keep up a single, free lifestyle in 40's and beyond if you are active, open minded to new things, and try to stay in shape and not want to 'settle' into a routine life....it takes a little work sure, but, there are payoffs, and you do not have to even come close to being lonely. I'm alone when I want to be....it is nice at times, but, it is a choice.

Re:wrong

[emilper]

Nothing says I am interested like leaning forward enough to brush against him, whisper in his ear something, and smiling.

That can be and is frequently faked. Those signals and a bit higher body temperature in the extremities might mean something. Otherwise it is just "let's recruit this geek to take care of my computer" or "I want to punish this geek for being male by persuading him to listen to the romanticized story of my unhappy love life".

Re:wrong

[dave562]

I have the confidence to walk up and introduce myself; I just don't know how to have conversations. For me everything boils down to problem solving, so if someone asks me a question my answers tend toward closure. My "goal" is to solve the conversation (ie. find its ending).

I suppose I could just change my goal to trying to see how long I can just keep talking on and on about nothing. You know, like women. ;)

I bet that you do know how to have conversations, you simply aren't comfortable having the kind of conversations that you imagine men have with women that lead to women having sex with the men they are talking to. It has been my experience that women are the hunters and men are the prey. The more attractive the woman, the more choices she has. Men have to do things to gain attention (either by dressing and behaving a certain way, or by initiating the conversation). The woman then decides how far the interaction is going to go.

You might consider a new way to consider conversations. Women aren't really interested in what you are talking about as much as they are interested in HOW you are talking and carrying yourself. Are you confident? Can you speak clearly? Are you focused on the subject at hand? Do you communicate a sense of purpose and is your conversation going anywhere? Is your conversation engaging? Are there opportunities there? Are your providing something for the person you are speaking with to become a part of?

Conversation is an art. Women like cunning linguists. Women like challenges. They like being stimulated. They will test you and put out hoops for you to jump through. Turn the tables on them. Make them prove that they are worth YOUR time. After spending a decade dealing with women, I finally figured out that focusing on women is a waste of time. Focus on what you are into. Do whatever furthers yourself and makes you a better person. Women are drawn to focus and confidence. Like attracts like.

If you look at seduction like a game, you are going to attract women who are playing games. If you realize that attracting worth while women is simply a by product of living a happy successful life, you will do much better when it comes to getting laid.

Re:wrong

[Alsee]

no idea how to get from "Hi" to "Let's fuck."

Well duuuh!

It's "Nice shoes."

-

Re:wrong

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Don't try to be the jerk. It's not you, and you'll screw it up in tiny ways that you'll never be able to understand. As someone who was in the same boat, I'm sure you've already experimented with being a toughguy at some point and got called out for it, and couldn't understand why, I mean these people do worse stuff all the time. No they don't, you screwed up. The ones that pull it off are that way all the way down. If you have to think about it, your mannerisms will be slightly off, your timing will be wrong, you'll say shit way out of line and just generally make a mess of things. Mostly you'll just look weird and unnatural, like some poorly wired robot trying to handle a task it was never meant for.

In order to pull it off successfully, it can't just be a mask you put on. You have to change yourself. Here's how: play. Do things just to see what happens, not to try to get the girl, or if you do do things just to get the girl don't put any emotional investment in it at all, because when it finally works it'll be a fluke and you won't even understand how it happened the first few times. Mostly it will just blow up in your face. Step one is being able to take that and be affected by it, you'll get rejected plenty of times.

Eventually you'll start to figure things out. Then you'll get real confidence. Then, depending on who you are, you might end up as the jerk. Hopefully not, it's a shitty thing to be. The thing is, you probably see a bunch of guys doing things and you think they're being a jerk, but the truth is you have no frame of reference. Maybe she deserved it. Maybe it's a game they're playing. Maybe they just had a fight. Maybe that's just the way those people are. Whatever. Don't pass judgment on other people's relationships, it's none of your business. Worry about yourself, or if you think you can do better, go rescue the girl or something.

Fact is, as a timid or inexperienced guy, a lot of perfectly normal things are going to seem "jerky" to you. Well, go out and experience it, find out for yourself, and everything that's holding you back will just melt away, but you can't get where you want to be just traveling to it in a straight line.

Or, on the other hand...

[ghostdoc]

The study actually just found that women are unclear about communicating their intentions to men.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[Knutsi]

An interesting follow up would be to look at men and womens abilities to communicate their emotional states to others of the same sex, and also broaden the range of "intents" studied towards the opposite sex. It's that men from Mars, women from Venus thingy.

Also, how about looking into this across cultures? Maybe the portrait of women as sexual predators that tend to flourish in the media conditions falsely and desensitizes to the subtelties in non-verbal communication on this, and other, subjects. Anyone remember the episode of Friends where they got free porn? ;)

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[mcvos]

An interesting follow up would be to look at men and womens abilities to communicate their emotional states to others of the same sex, and also broaden the range of "intents" studied towards the opposite sex.

That's exactly what I was thinking. If men understand the sexual intentions of other men, and women don't understand the sexual intentions of other women, then it's clearly the women who don't communicate clearly. If women understand each other but men don't, then it's men who are obvlivious. If men understand each other and women understand each other, but men don't understand women and vice versa, then it's the "women from Venus, men from Mars" thing". And if everybody has trouble understanding other people's sexual intentions, then people in general are unclear or oblivious about sexual intentions.

It's that men from Mars, women from Venus thingy.

That depends on the findings of the follow-up study.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[mikael_j]

Exactly, and what's even more interesting is that if a man decides to be slightly more subtle than "UGH! ME MAN! YOU WOMAN!" but still way more obvious than women generally are then most women seem to completely miss that the man was hitting on them and I've heard women complain about how a guy should've been "more clear about it" yet they themselves think a smile and twirling their hair between their fingers while looking at a guy for two seconds from across the room somehow is enough effort to be considered "taking the first step".

And then they can't understand why the guys they like never understand that they're attracted to them...

/Mikael

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[mpe]

An interesting follow up would be to look at men and womens abilities to communicate their emotional states to others of the same sex, and also broaden the range of "intents" studied towards the opposite sex.

Also look at if the sexual orientation of the "recipient" has any effect.
There is a known condition, Asberger's syndrome, which identifies people who are bad at understanding non verbal communication. (Which is also more commonly identified in men than women). Might there also be a condition of people being poor at expressing themselves non verbally. Effective communication does require mutual understanding. Of course there will always be people who deliberatly lie and mislead (who most likely have to be amongst the best communications in the human race to do this sucessfully).

Also, how about looking into this across cultures?

When people from different cultures are communicating they may be extra careful to avoid ambiguity. Even if they were to share the same verbal language they may well assume that they have a different non-verbal language and compensate accordingly. Of course you can't test this using just photographs or videos since there is no mutual dialogue involved.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[TapeCutter]

"It's that men from Mars, women from Venus thingy."

Actually they are both from Earth, but that bit of trivia is best kept to oneself if you want to gey laid.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[Knuckles]

The study actually just found that women are unclear about communicating their intentions to men.

Or that still images are poor communicators of intentions. From the study pdf:

Identification Task
Seated in a private computer room, participants categorized each of a series of photo images of women into one of four categories: friendly, sexually interested, sad, or rejecting. Each participant was randomly assigned to view the images for 500 ms or 3,000 ms. The 500-ms presentation time was sufficiently short to make it challenging to decode all relevant information thoroughly; the 3,000-ms presentation time provided ample opportunity for thorough processing.
Participants viewed the images in four blocks of 70 randomly ordered images, with a 30-s pause separating successive blocks.

This seems to have very little to tell us about actual real-life interaction between women and men, which tend to have much more going on than a frozen look. What's with smells, mimic, body language or, you know, the actual content of the conversation? Maybe the study authors have more experience with online sex, or they want to sell their method to webcam pr0n providers.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[Epistax]

Okay let me try. Situation, and how the communication works.

Situation 1: There's a real interest in a friendship, although there is no kind of physical attraction. The other person seems genuinely fun to be around

Female: Smiles at him, looks straight into his eyes so that he knows that she is not at all afraid of scaring him off and is therefore NOT looking for a serious relationship. However, she picks up conversation to learn about his interests to be able to propose things they can do together for fun.
Male: Asks "Wanna get drunk and play Smash Bros?"

Situation 2: There's a strong physical attraction and interest in pursuing a serious relationship.

Female: Gazes deeply into his eyes to give the impression that she is lost in him. This will provide an excellent "how-we-met" story for their kids. She tries to act interested in his interests because she wants to also be interesting to him.
Male: Asks "Wanna get drunk and play Smash Bros?" with an ulterior motive.

In conclusion, we're all idiots.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[VoidCrow]

Speaking entirely subjectively, my own sexual intent, as a woman, is like a ratchet with a very large reset button, with a mischievous monkey in attendance. The monkey keeps on pressing the reset button at random intervals. A man can interest me, and things can go very well right up until he says or does entirely the wrong thing (and don't ask me to define 'the wrong thing'). At this point, I completely lose interest and go back to being a nun. This is essentially why the man needs to spank the monkey.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[ATMAvatar]

In conclusion, we're all idiots.

Obviously. You should be asking her to play Mario Kart.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[Jesus_666]

I admit that my experience with women is rather limited because I'm a textbook geek in that regard, but the one steady girlfriend I did have was very big on this "undefined input causes random output" thing. She essentially reacted to random things in random ways (with the things she reacts to changing permanently), which made the relationship quite stressful. Is that normal?

Quite seriously, being in a relationship is great, but I don't have the time and energy to play behaviourist whenever I get talked to, with zero latency.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[nine-times]

No. The message should definitely be to women, "Be more clear about your intentions." Because even if men are naturally oblivious, we're not going to become any more insightful, but women can change their behavior. So women, if you don't want to send a message that your interested, quit flirting. If you are interested, go ahead and be forward.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[Opportunist]

What? Playing Smash Bros drunk? What an idiotic idea! When you're drunk, your hand-eye coordination suffers. I mean, would you want to lose in Smash Bros? TO A GIRL?

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[ocbwilg]

Seems like a fairly flawed study then, since most of the time the only way to interpret non-verbal communications correctly is by studying a series of expressions and body language positions. A single snapshot isn't going to do it.

I suspect that if they performed the same study on women they would also get similar results. It's not that I don't think that humans are that unclear in their communications, as there are clear signs of sexual interest in both genders. It's just that usually the object of those non-verbal signs of interest has difficulty interpreting those cues correctly, even when they are immediately obvious to a third-party observer.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I mean, would you want to lose in Smash Bros? TO A GIRL?"

If I got laid afterwards, YES.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[call-me-kenneth]

If you think about it from an evolutionary psychology stance, men and women will likely have rather different criteria when selecting partners.

Hate to sound like a biological reductionist (but I am, so I do) but a lot of gender roles (be they hardwired or culturally determined, strictly speaking) boild down to the biological differences. A woman has a huge investment when she selects a sexual partner, as pregnancy is a potentially life-threatening condition (which obviously limits one's chances of reproducing one's genes.) A man on the other hand can have many sexual partners, siring many offspring with different women, with la very low investment. Thus it's in women's interest to be extremely picky about a mate, and a man's interest to seek many sexual partners. (Of course things get a bit more complex when you factor in chances of a mother successfully rearing a child on her own.)

Modern healthcare, birth-control and the social support provided by technologically advanced societies dramatically change the goalposts, whilst leaving men and women still playing the hand evolutionary biology dealt them on the savannah a couple of million years ago. I've a latent interest in (what would you call it?) paleo-anthropology - the structure of prehistoric human society basically - however it's by definition 99.99% conjecture and theorising. Which is why I say: stuff putting humans on mars, let's have a government-funded time machine programme!

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[Anonymous Psychopath]

A women, who was a colleague, once sat on my lap and fed me my dinner... at a company function. Yet she had absolutely no sexual intention of any kind. Seven years after that event I finally got a date, and we're now married, so I was able to ask about the incident. She told me she didn't really know what she was thinking about, that she didn't find me particularly interesting at the time, and she didn't understand why her behavior was "taken out of context".

Huh???

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[jimicus]

The study actually just found that women are unclear about communicating their intentions to men.

For the world's women to accept such a conclusion, it would require admitting responsibility rather than just blaming men. Not gonna happen.

(Yes, I have karma to burn.)

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[wtansill]

So women, if you don't want to send a message that your interested, quit flirting. If you are interested, go ahead and be forward.

Well said sir! "Get lost!" and "Let's go back to my place and fuck like rabbits" are completely unambiguous to even the most clueless. Ladies, be clear!

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[nine-times]

I also think that women are sometimes seduced by their own uncertainty. It's as though, once they really decide to have sex, the whole thing becomes less interesting. It's more of a turn-on to have the question bouncing around in their own minds, "Do I *really* want this?" For women, the unknown and uncertain are more seductive than a known-good thing.

I don't have scientific evidence to back that up, nor do I have any evolutionary theory.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[bdrasin]

Are you hitting on me?

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[DrLang21]

So what you're saying is, you are unforgiving and don't give him a single chance to redeem himself? No man (or woman) is perfect. If my wife had left me at my first dumb outburst or thoughtless insensitive comment, we wouldn't have lasted a single year of dating. And the same goes the other way around. It's a fact of life that we all occasionally slip up.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[Opportunist]

Don't do that, it will haunt you forever. You will feel so cheap afterwards, like a whore, like you traded your dignity for some cheap sex. I still can't play DDR without ... I mean, a friend of mine still can't play DDR...

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[VoidCrow]

No, I'm not. What I'm saying is that my sexual interest is not under my conscious control. Would you rather have every woman you ever slept with *fake it* out of *sympathy*?

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[VoidCrow]

Well, I *was*, up until I found that your Transformer collection lacked a Devil Gigatron. What *were* you thinking?

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[pohl]

No. The message should definitely be to women, "Be more clear about your intentions."

Thats' a great fantasy, but women and men were carved out in very different evolutionary contexts, given that a man's theoretical-gene-spreading-bandwidth is limited only by his ability to get hard and get off -- whereas a woman has one uterus, must carry the child to term, and must ensure that the child gets resources and protection. In short, the evolutionary game for men was very simple: they sought vaginas, and could more easily choose to not take responsibility for the consequences. Women needed to seek someone able and willing to protect and provide.

The modern world -- with birth control, affluence, and virtual extinction of top-predators -- has made things somewhat less asymmetrical today, but our brains are still essentially the same machines they were in deep history.

That said, it is not to a woman's advantage to be clear about their intentions. Rather, it is to their advantage to wait for that one guy in a thousand who is able to pick up on her subtlety. It's an indicator of his genetic fitness. Now you can argue that such a guy would be a skillful player and might be less likely to stick around and support the child, but consider this: if their sexual transaction was initiated in a subtle manner, it's also more likely that it can be completed in secret as well. This protects her reputation and keeps her options open to go grab one of the other 999 out of a thousand who would make a great cuckold for the genes donated by the one guy capable of subtlety.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[VoidCrow]

It gets worse. Women are multi-threading.

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[evil_aar0n]

> When people from different cultures are communicating they may be extra careful to avoid ambiguity.

When we were in second grade - let's just say, "quite a while ago," and leave it at that - dating was initiated by writing a note to another person you liked along the lines of, "Do you love me? Yes No" The recipient circled one, gave the note back, and that was it: you were a couple. Or not. (I'm getting off topic, but there was this one girl who had this annoying habit of writing, "maybe." Grr...)

I think we could use something along those lines, today. You see a guy / girl you think you might like, and hand them a note saying: "Would you like to [have sex | develop a long-term relationship | hop in a large tub filled with whipped cream and Jell-O]? Yes No" They'd circle one, hand it back, and bada-bing, you'd know right away where you stood with that person.

It would certainly resolve some of the ambiguity. Unless they wrote "maybe."

Re:Or, on the other hand...

[beav007]

Would you rather have every woman you ever slept with *fake it* out of *sympathy*?

Slashdot poll #52245a
Would you rather:
a) A woman who is honest about her lack of feelings for you
b) A sympathy bone.

0.3% Voted (a)
63.8% Voted (b)
8.4% asked if there was any other kind
3.2% commented that RealDolls don't have feelings
and
24.3% complained about the lack of CowboyNeil option.

thanks

[ionix5891]

thanks for posting this info on /. we need all the education about the opposite sex that we need (never mind the mothers whose basements we hermits live in)

Re:thanks

[gomiam]

Hey, I think your mother tried to hit on me.

Are you sure there was any on involved?

Oh right

[Colin Smith]

Nothing to do with deliberate ambiguity fostered by females then.

Evolution

[Detritus]

Things sure were simpler when we were monkeys.

Re:Evolution

[Tablizer]

Things sure were simpler when we were monkeys.

Putting one in the Whitehouse certainly didn't simplify things.

-1 Political Troll

Re:Evolution

[rishistar]

Yeah - I'm still waiting for a woman to fling her faeces at me as a clear sign of her sexual intent.

Re:Evolution

[JohnSearle]

Yeah - I'm still waiting for a woman to fling her faeces at me as a clear sign of her sexual intent.

That's what it means! Damn... All those missed opportunities.

- John

Re:Evolution

[Dachannien]

Putting one in the Whitehouse certainly didn't simplify things. Sniff. I miss the 1990s, when sexual intentions in the White House were so easy to discern.

The other way around

[boombasticman]

Oh contraire! The girls should be more clear about what they intend to do. They normally say they just wanted to be friendly and are completly taken aback, when some guy understands their cryptic signs as encuragement to get together.

Humor?

[carpe_noctem]

Why's this story in the "Humor" section? What's so funny about a 30-year old virgin?

Oh, wait..... HAW, HAW!

Re:Humor?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always good when a man can laugh at himself! ;-)

Hogwash...

[KGIII]

While the results are likely true the reality is, in my opinion, that women don't make any sense. *nods* "Guys are clueless." The author, of the article at least, is female and many of today's men are so effeminate that we can't tell the difference. It is not that men haven't a clue, it is that women aren't willing (read able but I'm trying to be PC) to send clear signals.

We're MEN... We need CLEAR signals. We've only got enough blood to fill any one of the two organs at a time and most of the time it isn't the brain. Give us a CLEAR yes. You want us to fully comprehend then wear a damned sign - until then? Well... *shrugs*

Bah... Screw it... Until then remember that we've got too many people on the planet already.

Re:Hogwash...

[donscarletti]

We're MEN... We need CLEAR signals.

If you're trying to address the world's female population right now then I am afraid that you have your soapbox parked in the wrong forum.

Re:Hogwash...

[mcvos]

We're MEN... We need CLEAR signals.

We don't just need clear signals, be need explicitly stated intentions. Say "I want sex". Then we understand you.

Fortunately my wife is aware of this and doesn't expect me to pick up on subtle clues. When she wants something from me, she tells me so. I love her very much.

Re:Hogwash...

[bounty_hunter.poland]

If you're trying to address the world's female population right now then I am afraid that you have your soapbox parked in the wrong forum.

The are women on the internet! There are women on Slashdot! They just use manly nicknames, so we won't try to flirt with them all the time.

~amanda99: I'm really pissed with Microsoft pushing OOXML standarization!
~The-Man: Oh, you're so pretty when you're angry.

Re:Hogwash...

[norton_I]

I don't know. Are you better at telling when some girl is coming on to your friend? That would indicate that men can damn well read the signs fine, they just corrupt the reading with their own emotions when it is directed at themselves.

Re:Hogwash...

[Miseph]

On the contrary, many men have plenty of blood to run both, and are nice enough to think with the superior one even when the inferior one is standing up to make its own announcements. These men are also, however, not generally willing to just hit on anything with boobs, and have learned the hard way that sometimes when girls are nice to them that it means they just want to be friends.

Apparently, 60% of women need to realize that, frustrating as men's behavior might be, they solve plenty of problems by just thinking. If you really like your friend Todd because he's such a sweet guy and he never lechs out or anything, but he constantly seems to ignore your attempts to sleep with him, then you can safely assume that Todd is either totally gay or is simply being nice and not pervy to the point that he may well be dismissing the hints rather than risk creeping you out. I suggest talking to him about it, and not being so damned obtuse.

Re:Hogwash...

[Harald Paulsen]

They have talking realdolls now?

Re:Hogwash...

[psychodelicacy]

You missed an option - He's just not that into you!

Trust me, I tried the direct approach with one of my friends once, on the basis of the reasoning you just gave. Poor guy never quite got over it. Back to discreet hints for me.

Re:Hogwash...

[thewiz]

Thanks!
I've always wondered what my wife meant by, "You, me, sex, NOW!"

Re:Hogwash...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

That's right! He should make this speech at all the pr0n forums! I've always had a little trouble interpreting the sexual intentions of the women there.

Re:Hogwash...

[kilgortrout]

It's not that female signals are unclear. Their signals are emblematic of their internal ambivalence about the nature and extent of their sexual interest. Overlay this with most women's need to validate their own sexual desirability by eliciting male attention even where they have no interest in the guy and the scene is set for a lot of miscommunication.

Re:Hogwash...

[Hal_Porter]

Don't you think that women sending ambiguous signals is a barrier to stop stupid men breeding? Now I'm sure people are going to pipe up at this point and say they are good at programming and math and so on. But as the bumper stickers says "If you're so smart why ain't you rich?". And in any case numeric skills are one kind of intelligence. Social skills are another. If you can't pass the social intelligence test, no kids for you, unless you have the numeric skills to make an load of money. I'm skeptical that men have that option these days though, since most women make enough money to support themselves independently.

Re:Hogwash...

[jollyreaper]

Apparently, 60% of women need to realize that, frustrating as men's behavior might be, they solve plenty of problems by just thinking. If you really like your friend Todd because he's such a sweet guy and he never lechs out or anything, but he constantly seems to ignore your attempts to sleep with him, then you can safely assume that Todd is either totally gay or is simply being nice and not pervy to the point that he may well be dismissing the hints rather than risk creeping you out. I suggest talking to him about it, and not being so damned obtuse. True. Some guys are like Quagmire, they don't care how they come across and figure if they hit on every woman they meet, the law of averages will eventually give them success. Sometimes they will repeatedly hit on a woman who shows no sign of interest, becoming stalkerish.

Talking to women who have been on the receiving end of this sort of thing can be an eye-opener. Now of course there are also psycho-stalker women but that doesn't seem to happen quite as frequently as the other way around. My sister always seemed to attract the weirdos, they were drawn to long, blonde hair like barracudas to flashing metal. The skeevy behavior is enough to make your skin crawl. I would be mortified to have any woman I was interested in interpret my behavior that way. But how do you read the cues properly? Is this friendly interest or something more than friendly interest? And if she's only interested in being a friend and you show amorous interest, she may get weirded out by that completely.

Less assertive guys end up defaulting into inaction because they are unsure how to behave. Overly confident guys will continue to behave as they have before and there's quite a lot of empirical evidence out there supporting the theory that chicks dig alpha males (jerks).

Courtesy of Bill Hicks...

Aw, man Oh, Hitler had Ava Braun,
Manson had Squeaky Frawn,
Ted Bundy got lots of dates,
I wonder what I'm doing wrong.
I don't pretend to understand women's little quirks
Just one thing I know for sure - chicks dig jerks, yeah.
Well, if I meet one more single mom
Whose true love is up and gone
Tells me on her trailer porch
'Bout that man
Still carries a torch,
Sure, he came home drunk each night
Beat the kids and her in a fight,
But, man, she loves him so,
It's so hard to let him go, aw.
Well, I don't pretend to understand women's little quirks,
Just one thing I know for sure - chicks dig jerks.
Well, I'm sure there's some out there who can relate,
Particularly young men without a date
See some jerk, some fine, fine babe,
Go driving away, aw.
Well, is that a new bruise you got on you?
What does it say, that he loves you?
Sure he beats you, but afterwards he cries, "Oh, baby, I could die."
Honey, I don't think that's nothing to be proud of,
I think it's called alcoholism
I don't think you should move away,
Stay with him till you're in your grave, yeah.
"You're so sweet."
"Can't we just be friends?"
"I think of you as a brother."
Aw, man. You're hurting me.
What do I have to offer you, baby?
Poetry and true love.
That's not enough, I know for sure,
You need someone to throw you through the door.
Well, I don't pretend to understand women's little quirks.
Just one thing I know for sure-chicks dig jerks!
Chicks dig jerks, it's so true.
Tell you, man, be mean to 'em man, they'll never leave you, then,
'Cause chicks dig jerks.
Just ignore 'em.
Act like they're not there.
Man, you're gonna be pulling chicks out of your hair.
They love that.
Act like you don't care,
Aw, look at them everywhere, they come running.
Tired of being a good guy Such a lonely life.
I'm gonna be a jerk Yeah, that's right, I'm gonna step on lots of toes.
Whoo, girls gonna go crazy for that kind of guy.
Baby, I'm gonna act like I don't know you.
Not gonna return one of your calls.
Yeah, I'm a jerk And it's working out.

Re:Hogwash...

[DavidTC]

I think you, of all people, have managed to peg it. It doesn't have anything to do with 'miscommunication' on the part of the woman or 'misunderstanding' on the part of the man.

It has to do with the fact the woman who has no idea what she wants.

Or at least doesn't have any idea until after the interpretation is made by the man. And there's a psychological trick that if you don't know what you want of two choices, and get handed one randomly, you're actually somewhat more likely to suddenly decided you wanted the other things. A 'grass is always greener' thing.

I'm glad that finally one study has noticed that men can't detect in either direction, which demonstrates that men are not crazed horndogs who are attempting to constantly ht on women they don't think are attracted to them, but rather they honestly don't know. (Although they are somewhat optimistic and willing to go for 'sex' when the odds are 50/50, because, hey, they'd often rather be right about that than right about 'friend'.)

And I'm convinced that the men who can 'detect' what women actually want have just figured out how to fix that problem by clever maneuvering. They should give classes in 'How to talk women into deciding they're attracted to you or not attracted to you'.

Incidentally, I'm not trying to trash women here. Not know what you want to do happens a lot more than people think, half the time people have no idea what they're doing and don't realize it until after, when they make up little justifications for it. The brain does not consciously decide a good deal of things you do, for both men and women. (Just right now, when thinking what to type, I found myself staring at my computer off to the side while thinking. I didn't choose to do that, my brain did that without asking 'me'.)

It's just with men, the brain has a little 'sex' notification it bounces in every 45 seconds or so if there are women in the area, so we actually do decide if want sex consciously. (Almost always 'yes', but, despite what women think, we are willing to ignore that if we think the woman doesn't want it.) Whereas women do not decide that.

Here's a tip for women who are frustrated by the fact no one understands their signals in either direction: Think about sex more. Whenever you see a guy, imagine having sex with him. Or at least any guy you think is 'cute' or 'interesting'. I'm not saying to want to have sex with him, I'm saying imagine it, and then you'll decide if you want to or not, and then your 'signals' will be a lot clearer because you'll actually know what the heck you're trying to signal.

And, yes, there are a certain class of men who don't understand 'female friends signals' at all, or who do understand but don't actually want any of those, but go along anyway thinking they can subvert them into sex.

Consider it payback for the fact that women do the exact opposite, wanting male friends that are providing all the emotional needs of boyfriends, but without intimacy, while they have boyfriends that are manifestly wrong for them and only in it for the sex. Just like men have biological need to reproduce, so they have lots of kids, women have one to 'be safe' and 'cared for', so they have a place to raise kids. And just like men need to keep their needs in check and not make sure they're fulfilling that need for sex at the expense of 'conquests', women need to make sure they're not fulfilling that need for safety at the expense of their 'male friends'.

Evolution?

[Tablizer]

There may be some evolutionary advantage in over-interpreting signals. Even though you may be wrong most of the time, the few times you are right still gets you some bootie. (Although it barely offsets the broken leg from one of the error's boyfriends.)

Re:Evolution?

[Knutsi]

Or, if you are a true alpha male, the error's boyfriend would be the one left behind in the dust. Now that's natural selection for you. Sad principle upon to build a stable, peaceful society thought, so let's raise above that ;) Me being a spindly nerd has nothing to do with this view of course.

Re:Evolution?

[BiggerIsBetter]

Don't forget the evolutionary advantage in "mis-communicating" by the females. More or less, guys who like you do stuff for you. You can sleep with whoever you want (eg, the alpha male) and the other guys (beta males) will still bust a nut trying to score by being nice / doing your bidding. Sending misleading signals is absolutely full of win for the girls (until you meet a psycho).

Genetic link?

[lobiusmoop]

Since humans are one of the few species that conceal ovulation I am wondering if this has a more genetic basis.

Re:Genetic link?

[spasticfraggle]

Never been married?

The main reason I had a third child with my wife was the prospect of 18 months without PMS!

Re:Genetic link?

[Himring]

I've always wondered why my line, "are you ovulating?" never worked like I thought it would....

Evolutionarily...

[Neon Aardvark]

Ambiguity is probably in women's interest. Just like ovulation being hidden from men, unusually in the animal world (which makes men compete sexually for women constantly, and not just at particular times).

Probably gives women greater power (or rather, it increases the statistical chance of the genes of a particular woman being successfully passed on, which is all natural cares about).

Research on Campus

[Marcion]

Researchers are so lazy, interviewing people on campus, just because they are there next to you, does not seem to be a very credible methodology. Students are probably not a representative sample of anything.

Re:Research on Campus

[Anne Thwacks]

Students are probably not a representative sample of anything.

Au cointraire, mon frere, students are very representative of people who lie on questionares about sex

This study is not worth the e-paper its not written on. That goes for almost all other questinaires about sex too.

Women often conflate the two themselves

[GodfatherofSoul]

Anyone who's dated or flirted has dealt with women (I'm sure it works both ways) who feign sexual interest to achieve another outcome, or feigned disinterested friendliness when the opposite is true. I consider myself an expert as I've misread women in just about any way possible.

Or, another possible interpretation

[Torodung]

Wow. Talk about interpreting the data to fit ones prejudices, instead of exploring all possibilities.

How about this take?: Women can't effectively communicate sexual intent (or lack) to men.

Or maybe we'll decide not to bow to such specious sexist chauvinism?: Study shows people are confused about sexuality. Women don't know how to ask for it, and the men don't know when they're asking. NAAAH!

It may seem trite, but communication is a two way street. Both the speaker and the listener are equally to blame for a failed communication, usually for not setting a clear set of assumptions upon which to base it. You know, language.

I would say that what this shows is that the language of sexual intent, especially primary (non-verbal) language, is sorely lacking. Have you seen the current youth "sexy dance?" They are seriously just out there having fun. Not a thing wrong with it. But if I did that with my wife, she'd know I want to "get down" later.

Don't get me wrong, they're hooking up too, but they're out there grinding like a bunch of feckless bunnies, and it doesn't necessarily mean anyone wants to have sex.

How could anyone not be confused? The only societal basis in the sexual dialogue we have any more is that misinterpretation is the only crime, and that only men misinterpret, because they're so bad at communication.

That's not a basis for relations between the sexes, that's absurd chauvinistic prejudice that makes your right hand seem considerably less risky.

So, in the age of sexy dancing, well past overtly sexualized clothing, trivialized sexual language, and a general dissolving of the entire courting process, how does one communicate, "Hey sailor, wanna fuck?" in a subtle and socially acceptable fashion?

That's not a question worth answering when you can just blame the man for being clueless.

Retitle: Study shows common prejudice that communications problems are always the man's fault. New study sets out to prove that the trivialization of sexual content in American society has left all parties thoroughly rudderless.

--
Toro

Re:So what it's saying is ...

[Digestromath]

We spent significant resources developing a verbal language, and it's about damn time women started using it.

Begin with simple statements:

Put down the 20 sided dice and come have a drink with me.

Your guild can raid without you for a night, lets go see a movie.

We can make out while your program compiles.

I know you enjoy moderating that silly Slashdot forum, but we could be having sex right now!

I work in a bar

[t0qer]

I've worked for a karaoke bar called the 7 Bamboo since 2001. Here's some video clips of the mayhem.

http://uncutvideo.aol.com/users/sevenbamboovideo

Here's a statement from a guy that deals with both sexes at the core of thier honest drunkness when it comes to getting what they want. In this case, it mostly happens when our playlist is so full we cannot take anymore requests.

Guys will typically flash cash, or they'll do a intimidation display (beating thier chest) to get what they want. Girls on the other hand will flirt, pout, or use some other form of sexual display.

So when a slobbering drunk girl is pouting at me, bent over the booth, cleavage showing, saying "PLEASE MR KARAOKE MAN! LET ME HAVE ONE MORE SONG!" You mean to tell me as a male i'm misreading what she's trying to communicate?

She's trying to tell me "I'll fuck your brains out of this world if you let me sing." 99% of the women will pretend this is thier offer, but never deliver. (Yes, there's a small maybe even less than 1% that would deliver. (Cue up the "TOQER PLZ INTRO ME jokes now)

Just because a woman has no intent on fullfilling the message she's projecting, it doesn't diminish the fact that she *IS* trying to get that message across. It could be cleavage, it could me smiling and acting all cute, it could be putting thier arm around you, women have a lot of body language things they can do to convey it.

Not all men can tell the difference either. In fact, I'd say the majority can't. It's not fair to lump all us men together as one chauvenist mass though because women are trying to decieve us. Who's worse? The dumb man that can't tell the difference, or the salacious seductructress using her false (read lying) sexual messages?

And maybe I just don't know WTF i'm talking about because I have a skewed view of the world based on where I work, but I did work in desktop support in corporate enviroments for many years prior (think netware, early .com, NT3.51 days) I used to see women use the very same techniques at work to size new hires up, or get guys to help them on projects, or whatever. I think this is pre-programmed into us from our primate ancestors (ever see female chimps in heat with the swollen red asses? How about the bonobo chimps trading sex for food, etc.)

My wife is a very paranoid lady when it comes to other women. I think deep down inside all women know that all other women use sexual body cues in the same way. I used to think my wife was nuts when she would be all jealous of other girls standing around me, but after 14 years of her giving me cues I can sort of spot what's going on now too.

I believe a lot of this behavior is going to end at my generation. We didn't have this tharn intarnet in the 70's when I was born. I believe that the net, womens sufferage, and globalization has lead to a balancing out of the genders (at least here in the US) We are really on the verge of having a woman president, and that says a lot for how much gender roles have changed in this country. A lot of men (like me) had to take what jobs they could in 2001 between the layoffs and 9/11. I'm not the breadwinner in my household anymore, and i'm OK with that.

I look forward to it. It's got to be better than the message tradition beliefs and pop culture has tried to teach us. Western Christianity has typically conveyed that the man is in a dominant role, and the woman is a sexual toy/servant/baby launcher. I think the best balance is a true partnership, but so many women, men are running around ignorantly trying to assert thier gender role that they don't learn that till many years down the road.

There's also another side to this and that's the pop culture aspect. How many of you have watch Margeret Cho and Andrew Dice Clay?

I've known girls that follow Cho like she's Jesus, and guys follow ADC like he's uhh I dunno, Jesus? I'm sure other folks have seen the same. People a

Re:I work in a bar

[Anonymous Coward]

She's trying to tell me "I'll fuck your brains out of this world if you let me sing." 99% of the women will pretend this is thier offer, but never deliver. {...} I think this is pre-programmed into us from our primate ancestors (ever see female chimps in heat with the swollen red asses? How about the bonobo chimps trading sex for food, etc.)

Posting AC for obvious reasons, I'd just like to say that you're more right than you may even know here. The only correction I might make is in your phrasing when you say that a woman is "trying" to convey something, since, in my experience, it's frequently quite involuntary. It's also not necessarily a direct proferring of sex, but a way of fitting into a role that looks vulnerable and inspires a hopefully sympathetic reaction. I had a jarring experience with my own evolutionary throwback a year or two ago in Japan. I was alone in Japan for a little over a week, not knowing much Japanese, but trying to be independent as possible anyway. Each time I had to communicate with people (hostel clerks, train station receptionists, etc.), male or female, I could feel my eyes involuntarily became wider, my lower lip protrude, my brow knit in an innocently perplexed manner. It went entirely against my usual modus operandi of being strong and solitary, but as soon as I needed someone's help, really needed it just to get by, here was this automatic mechanism to make me look younger and more harmless and, frankly, dumber and in greater need than I may really have been. And it worked. Damn near every time I asked for help in an uncertain, wavery manner, people treated me more kindly and patiently than they usually do ever. I suppose I could have felt empowered by this, but I was mostly balking at my sudden inability to control what the hell my face did, and feeling guilty for manipulating people, even if it was harmless and I didn't mean to.

I don't doubt that there are women who know exactly what they're doing when they pout at you, but you might be surprised by how many more don't

Re:So what it's saying is ...

[bounty_hunter.poland]

I know you enjoy moderating that silly Slashdot forum, but we could be having sex right now! ...and now I cried.

Re:So what it's saying is ...

[Torodung]

... that women are useless at communicating non-verbally with men, as they persist in using signals that are in fact only understood by women. First off, I think women typically place a much higher value on secondary (verbal) communication than men do, and men a higher value on primary than women do, and that this probably has much to do with evolution as anything else.

But the real kicker is that our society has taken away every subtle means of communicating such things non-verbally by trivializing and commercializing sexuality as a way of getting adults to sublimate continual titillation into their shopping. Sex sells, and as a result, primary language of that sort has become nothing more than an affectation, instead of a seductive invitation. I've heard lectures given deliberately stating that it is never an overture, even if it would make any man of moderate libido flush.

To men, our blood pressure goes up involuntarily, and then even the slightest smile seems like a flirtation. We're supposed to somehow contain our biology and millenia of evolutionarily determined visual cues. Women downplay this effect because they're not wired that way.

Personally, I'd like to see a study on what happens to male judgment whilst trying to contain an involuntary erection. It might have something to do with the results. Worse than "beer goggles" is the kind of wishful thinking that typically occurs when a man is aroused.

--
Toro

It gets even worse on the flip side

[eclectro]

Years later I realized that a couple of women were hitting on me and being the idiot nerd that I am, I didn't "get it." DOH!!!

Re:What is a barista smile?

[GamerCowboy]

A barista is the person who makes coffee at a coffee shop. Merriam-Webster defines it.

Re:So what it's saying is ...

[laejoh]

You forgot: let me put on my robe and wizard hat!

Wrong summary, wrong accompanying article

[ElGanzoLoco]

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" .
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 /. summary: Men were found commonly to perceive more sexual intent in women's behavior than women were intending to convey.
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).

Re:most women are just plain crazy

[msormune]

Isn't it a wee bit jaded to call the girl a whore and the guys just 'guys'...? I mean, they probably would have had sex with just about every girl imaginable. Makes them at least just as big whores in my book...

Smalltalk is the answer.

[master_p]

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!!!

Re:Smalltalk is the answer.

[BotnetZombie]

Way too much info to be remembered. Much simpler:
1. Pretend to agree with whatever nonsense she says
2. Don't give up before the goods are delivered
3. Goto 1

Re:Smalltalk is the answer.

[theGreyMuppet]

Maybe your advice is the best in the world but, goddamnit, I'm _not_ gonna take any how-to-score-with-chicks advice from /. !!

Re:Smalltalk is the answer.

[master_p]

It depends on the type of women you want to approach. My comment was about long term relationships which are based on mutual trust...a relationship that may lead to a family.

Personally, I find these relationships more satisfying than short intense erotic relationships. There is much enjoyment to be had from hand holding as well as from making love.

If you want to attract the more adventurous women, you can try to play the really daring type, the playboy, the guy with the Harley Davidson which is an easy rider, but would it be really you? women can easily understand pretenders. I prefer that women like me for what I am, even if what I am is not very exciting or adventurous...

Sex sells

[192939495969798999]

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.

Something can be done about this

[assertation]

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

That's because

[koan]

It pays biologically for men to err on the side of trying to get laid, for women it's better to err on the side of caution.

FORM

[dcrockerjr]

FORM: Family, Occupation, Recreation, Money. When ladies talk to you they are only trying to assess your worth. Wealth of an individual can sometimes change with time and circumstance. So ladies put those they believe might become wealthy in the "friends" category, if they do become wealthy they simply pretend they were interested all along.

Re:FORM

[perlchild]

Your example might provide a reason for the results of the study... Women might not want their signs of interest understood as much as they say they do.

Re:FORM

[Belial6]

Jeez, you think? This study is stupid. It takes a group who get financial gain by pretending to offer sex and then not going through with it and then letting them tell you whether they were screwing over their marks. What next, we are going to ask Comcast if they are offering the best service possible to bittorrent users?

We had hundreds of thousands of years where offering sex for financial gain was not just possible, but was necessary for survival. Most of human history would have seen women who have sex without financial gain dead very quickly. Pregnancy would have been a forgone conclusion, and trying to chase down a carriboo while 9 months pregnant would not end well. So, the women that survived to pass on their genes and traditions were the ones that found a "good provider". "Good Provider" is by definition someone who is going to keep the money (or stuff that money buys) coming in. I have talked to many women who were given the advice by their grandmothers of "Marry a fireman, because at least you always have the pension."

Now, times have changed. Women no longer require men just to survive. But, you don't stop a few hundred thousand years worth of human behaviour in 40 or 50 years. Particularly when the behaviour is profitable and fully accepted by the group.

Very simply, prostitution is profitable, and prostitutes that do not keep up their end of the deal are not punished, so why would anyone expect a prostitute to admit that she is not keeping up her end of the deal.

Oblig John Prine

[Bayoudegradeable]

Always marry an ugly girl, that's the only kind. She'll never ever leave you, and if she does you won't mind. Let's not forget, ugly girls need lovin', too! But then again, discussing sex with women on slashdot is like discussing Ubuntu with your grandmother... neither party knows what the hell is going on...

Re:Oblig John Prine

[sammy baby]

I frequently study this "sex" business courtesy of the internet.

Exactly. I have high hopes of settling down one day, once I can find a pair of nice girls who don't mind sharing a cup.

Re:Other cultures

[maxume]

People from different cultures might be extra careful, or they might simply blunder forth. There was a great livejournal entry about a westerners experience in Japan:

http://supacat.livejournal.com/111072.html

but the user has since protected it.

Does clear communication make sense?

[tinkerton]

Should clear communication be the aim? There are advantages to ambiguity. There is caution and deniability, there is the benefit of getting attention without any commitment, there is avoiding the counterproductive effect of showing too much interest (it makes you less interesting).

It's also possible to draw a distinction between an ambiguous and a vague signal: an ambiguous signal can trigger an idea without actually confirming it, like "don't think of an elephant" activating the idea of the elephant in your head. With a vague signal you may not even think of an elephant. So is there value in sending vague signals? Maybe "don't think of an elephant" is often too direct so that you can only send vague signals instead.

Then there is the difference between misinterpreting a signal and hope. If men are getting hopeful based on just a friendly signal, it doesn't mean they misinterpreted the signal.

Re:This is the story of my life

[Bertie]

Maybe he's just modest.

Personally I've no problem whatsoever spotting a girl's interest in someone, except when the someone's me. Then I keep telling myself that I shouldn't be so presumptuous, it must be my imagination, she couldn't possibly be interested in me, etc. etc. Of course, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy, because she soon loses interest if you act like that. You pretty much have to grab me by the lapels and drag me into the bedroom, not because I don't Get It, but because I can't see the appeal.

Subconscious flirting

[Lorien_the_first_one]

But consider this:

Women will often flirt with a man just for attention. I've met women who simply didn't even know what they were doing was interpreted as flirting. And when I confronted them with this observation, they gave this crazymaking attitude like "I don't even know what you're talking about. I was just being friendly." Yeah, right.

Philipino women are a great example of behavior that can easily be mistaken for flirting. I've never been more confounded by any other culture. The world "no" just isn't in their immediate vocabulary.

Women from American culture can flirt just out of anger. Anyone remember that song, "I know What Boys Like" by the Waitresses? That song spelled it out loud and clear.Women were tired of feeling as if they were being oppressed by men. So they used their power against the men.

Those are just two of the reasons that I've found for the confusion on the part of the women. I know why I've been confused before: I was single. Now that I'm married, that confusion is pretty much gone. I know where I stand with my wife.

It takes two to tango. It's not just that men have blurry vision. Women have fuzzy behavior, too.

Re:Subconscious flirting

[FredFredrickson]

I would say men's blurry vision is a result of women's blurry behavior. If we didn't have to just keep guessing, we'd be able to react to situations better. Fact of the matter is, we are expected to pick up on strange signals and look for clues where there shouldn't be. That is what women expect of us. So excuse us for doing our best trying to figure out women, but don't blame us when we misinterperate. If women wanted to be more direct and less ambiguous, men could stop trying to "read into" things, and fsck everything up.

In other words, I blame women.

Communicate clearly and you will be understood

[Opportunist]

I remember that one show from Home Improvement when Tim held up the stop sign, saying "STOP". With the other side having the female way of saying it, reading "If you really cared for me, you'd know what to do now". I found it funny because it's just plain true.

We are men. We enjoy a direct, blunt and honest way of talking. Wanna have sex? Then say so. Don't? Works for me either. But don't be surprised that we act it! What this study shows is that we can't "read" women. Ok, we can't. Big news. We're used to saying what we want, and also to being told what is expected from us. The best joke is always a woman complaining that in her relationship, they always do what he wants, be it sexually or otherwise. Guess what: He said what he wants! She was sitting there, waiting for him to guess her interests and desires.

Dear women (in case there are any on /., my hopes are still there): TELL US, in no uncertain terms, what you want. We're notoriously bad at guessing. We do care for your feelings and needs, but we don't guess them. A man is not constantly trying to find out what's wrong, the way a man works, for him everything is running fine as long as there's nobody complaining. No complaint, no change. We do subscribe to the "never change a running system" theory of thinking. Don't try to poke into a system (or relationship for that matter) without good reason. And some ambigious sigh is no good reason.

Grab your man and tell him what you want, dammit! Be blunt. We need that.

Re:Communicate clearly and you will be understood

[skelly33]

This reminds me of a joke that I think was in the movie "Colors" - A young bull and an old bull crest the top of a hill and see a valley of cows grazing below them. The young bull says to the other, "let's run down there and fuck one of them cows!" The old bull replies, "no... let's walk down there and fuck them all."

This very simple concept to me perfectly illustrates the situation: At the most basic level, males bond nearly without emotion and certainly without empathy for the females. Females group together for protection in the wild, sensitive to one another's needs. Males have no intention for friendship or relationships with the females and desire only to spread their seed. They are distinctly separate social groups with polar opposite perceptions of the world.

We (humanity) are not programmed for signals, responsiveness, reciprocation or charm. Take it all the way back to cave dwellers - it's survival of the fittest: males impregnate as often and widely as possible, and females do their best to attract the most capable male to them.

I don't think it's any more women's fault that they don't communicate clearly than it is men's fault that they don't understand: men and women weren't designed to be friends; it's society's fault for brain washing us all into thinking that is the case. Now men want to train women to think like them, and women want to train men conversely. It will never work. Ever. The battle of the sexes is doomed to eternal conflict.

As an aside, if you ever find yourself wondering why the younger generations seem to be a directionless, lazy mob - maybe it's because we have confused the crap out them trying to reprogram their basic instincts into being more appreciative, sensitive, caring, emotive, respectful, and yadda, yadda - new-fangled, confusing ideas that conflict with, if not "instinct", their basic behavioral programming.

skewed results...

[steveaustin1971]

In the time it would take to do the study, the women would change their minds 4 times making the results invalid...

The One With The Free Porn, se4ep17

[stupidflanders]

Chandler: I was just at the bank and there was this really hot teller, and she didn't ask me to go do it with her in the vault!
Joey: Same kind of thing happened to me! Woman pizza-delivery guy comes over, gives me the pizza, takes the money, and leaves!
Chandler: What? No, "Nice apartment, I bet the bedrooms are huge?"
Joey: No! Nothing!
Chandler: You know what? We have to turn off the porn.

Ditto here...

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Clear communication is king/queen. My wife is Vietnamese, I'm hard of hearing. Perfect match. If she says something and I don't hear it, I say, "What?" She doesn't mind repeating herself because it's practice in a foreign language.

But she is absolutely clear about what she wants 99% of the time. That one percent requires clarification. To me, that is what makes love worth getting into.

For those of you who are still in the dark, check out an interesting book called "Getting the Love You Want", by Harville Hendrix. It is the best book I've ever read about relationships for the following reasons:

1. Gives the best description of the physiological basis for why men and women do mean things to each other in relationships.
2. Gives a clear path towards the love in a relationship by describing how to change the stimulus/response process between each partner to each other without manipulation.

Many of the other books I've read are really a set of rules for "understanding" the other person so that you can "control" the other person without letting him/her know about it. Maybe I'm not that good at selecting books, but that has been my observation.

And then there are 12-step meetings since for many people, this can be a problem that cannot be solved by the unaided will.

Take what you like from this message and leave the rest.

I agree

[Jane Q. Public]

In almost ANY communications scenario in which a message is being received but misinterpreted, it must be the job of the sender to clarify the message. The receiver does not know what is wrong, and therefore has no way to force it make sense. The sender, on the other hand, can often perceive what is wrong, and correct the sending.

It doesn't matter who you blame, the fact is that as a practical matter, nobody can clear this up but the sender of the signals. So before women go complaining that their signals are misunderstood, they should make some effort to make sure their signals are unmistakable!

Re:I agree

[mgblst]

It is very simple, if a girl is interested in you, she will flirt with you. If you then show some interest back in her, she will decide that you are not good enough for her, and will no longer want you. If you continue to show interest, she will get pissed off.

The best strategy is to just ignore the girls interests, this will spur her onto more desperate measures, ended in her jumping on you. I find this to be a satisfactory end.

Re:Other cultures

[Dogtanian]

There was a great livejournal entry about a westerners experience in Japan: http://supacat.livejournal.com/111072.html but the user has since protected it. Don't know about you, but my first response to that sort of thing is to check the Google cache. Lo and behold:-
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. :)

Women also misinterpret women's intentions

[srobert]

A typical conversation with my wife goes something like this:
  Her: "That girl was flirting with you."
  Me: "What girl?"
  "The waitress, (receptionist, librarian, whatever). She was openly blatantly flirting."
  "I think she was just being polite."
  "No, She wasn't. She was openly blatantly flirting with you and you're too stupid to see it."

  Ok, now let me recount the conversation with the waitress that led my wife to this conclusion.
  Me: "Miss, could I please have some more coffee?"
  Waitress: "Sure, I'm making a fresh pot. It'll be ready in just a minute."
  Me: "Thank You."

  Now maybe my wife is seeing something I'm not. But I think when she said she was making a fresh pot of coffee, that what she really meant was ... that she was making a fresh pot of coffee.

go ahead. blame the user.

[snsh]

This is another case of blaming the user for confusing interfaces,
and another case of blaming hardware for a software problem.

Oblig Roaring Lion

[Scrameustache]

Always marry an ugly girl, that's the only kind. She'll never ever leave you, and if she does you won't mind. If you wanna be happy for the rest of life, never make a pretty woman your wife;
Go for my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you!

Concious lying.

[Scrameustache]

Women will often flirt with a man just for attention. Very, very true. There's a girl I know, very pretty, very flirty. If you give her enough attention, she'll eventually start mentioning her boyfriend. I asked her about it, she says if people know she has a boyfriend right away they don't come over and talk as much. She does it on purpose, and takes offense at the suggestion that this isn't right.

I've met women who simply didn't even know what they were doing was interpreted as flirting. Afraid not. You've actually met women who were really good actresses.

And when I confronted them with this observation, they gave this crazymaking attitude like "I don't even know what you're talking about. I was just being friendly." Yeah, right. Yeah right indeed. I've had "that wasn't flirting!" applied to telling me to come closer, feeding me something with her hand and softly brushing my lip with her finger... the denial came AFTER that led to some good, sweaty fun. Apparently, she never made any signals (yeah right), it was all me (sure), and the soft caress on my lip was nothing but innocent accidental contact (do I look that gullible?).

Re:Concious lying.

[Reziac]

Two folks argue,

A: I've met women who simply didn't even know what they were doing was interpreted as flirting.
B: Afraid not. You've actually met women who were really good actresses.

I've seen both. There really ARE women who flirt without realising what they're doing, just like there are guys who apply sexual pressure without really knowing they're doing it. These are biologically primitive behaviours. And both types are astonished and insulted when you call 'em on it, cuz they really had no idea.

The actresses, in my observation, are more overtly flirty, but the big difference is that they WATCH the guys for their reaction, rather than having no idea how the guy is reacting.

Re:Concious lying.

[earlymon]

I said it with a straight face because I didn't sit around any drinking campfires a few million years ago, but I have been with Egyptians, Ethopians, Thais, Chinese, Japanese and Norwegians - to name but a few - at campfires and bars in their own countries as well as here.

Flirting is very cultural, that is, the rules are centric to the governing cultures. I speak from firsthand experience.

I can't believe you're countering firsthand experience with people with YouTubes of birds doing mating dances - with a straight face.

Admit it - you're just upset because you didn't know to lick the alphabet(*), did you?

(* - RIP, Sam Kinison and thanks for the roses a buddy's wife sent when I turned him on to that bit.)

Re:Looking for ovulation? Check the clothes.

[iabervon]

Sure, if you want to predict ovulation slightly better than chance in large samples with no systematic bias. But other factors (including, for example, what impression the person wants you to get) have a larger effect that gets averaged out in studies. Clothes will tell you whether a woman is ovulating, but they're no more likely to get you the right answer than asking her; either way, you'll only get the right answer if she doesn't have a particular answer she wants you to get, or if you average across a large number of trials.

seriously this is wearing thin

[spazdor]

gb2/b/