can't tell if this psychology study exists

September 27, 2009 10:23 PM

I recently read about a study on what body language women use as perceived by men. Essentially, it said that there was no observable difference between a woman trying to flirt with a man and the same woman just being polite for the first four or five minutes of their first conversation together. I'm trying to find out if this actually happened, and if so whether it was a reliable, scientifically done study, but I lost the link right after reading it.
posted by sandswipe to science & nature (8 comments total)

I know what you're talking about, but I don't know the exact study or where I heard about it either. I do remember thinking that it was pretty much BS, based on some broad generalizations that were made about gesture vs. 'body language', and discounting other channels such as speech and prosody. That and this asinine idea that men are dolts that are incapable of processing multiple channels of consistent information.

But really, I think it's flawed for another reason...the people conducting this study, were they men? Because if they were, and they determined that there were no observable differences between the two conditions...
posted by iamkimiam at 10:47 PM on September 27 [1 favorite]

I found this abstract which seems to reference the study to which you refer.
posted by Night_owl at 10:57 PM on September 27

And just in case it helps out, I searched for "study women flirt "first few minutes" difference".
posted by Night_owl at 11:09 PM on September 27

ALSO: I saw it as a random internet article with a link to the study, and have no idea where the study was done or who ran it.

iamkimiam: if I'm remembering it correctly, it wasn't so much that men were too stupid to notice differences, but that a woman trying to make a good first impression just because they're not a terrible person and a woman trying to make a good first impression because they may eventually want to see the other person naked (but not be blatant about it) will happen to act in a very similar way, though it may have been a bit more sexist then I'm remembering.
posted by sandswipe at 11:09 PM on September 27

I read this, or at least I glanced at it and rolled my eyes, but I can't find it now either.

(If the wild variety of women could be reduced to some reliably consistent "women" constant... well, they wouldn't be women. Or worth flirting with.)
posted by rokusan at 11:14 PM on September 27

I've seen this study too. Here's an abstract that seems to say exactly what you menntion, although it's phrased differently than I remember:

Grammer, Kruck, Juette & Fink 2000

In this work, we provide evidence based on direct observation of behavior in encounters of opposite-sexed strangers, that women initiate and “control” the outcome. In the first minute of these videotaped 10-min interactions, neither female “solicitation” behavior nor “negative” behavior is strongly related to professed interest in the man, while female “affirmative” behavior at this stage modulates male verbal output in later stages (4–10 min). Although the rate of female courtship-like behavior is significantly higher in the first minute, it is only in the fourth to tenth minute that the rate of female courtship-like behavior is correlated with professed female interest. We hypothesize that this serves as a strategic dynamic reflecting sexual asymmetry in parental investment and the potential cost of male deception to women. Ambiguous protean behavioral strategies veil individuals' intentions and make their future actions unpredictable. These behavioral strategies may result in men's overestimation of female sexual interest.

If you want a .pdf of the study, let me know.
posted by miagaille at 5:18 AM on September 28

If such a study was done, I'm sure it revealed plenty of patterns in the aggregate. But I don't think this would be applicable in predicting or interpreting individual actions. The differences between individual people would be "noisier" than the pattern.

When you are talking about biological courtship kinds of behaviors, it is a tricky dance. Just as certain glances, smiles and pupil dilations can trigger the other person's courtship receptors, trying to speed up or slow down the giving of these signals will mess with the other person's interpretations. Men and women get squicked out by overly aggressive courting signals (skipping steps). Kinda like when you are on a date- the exact same flirty comment at the beginning of the meal versus at the end of the meal sends two very different signals. The beginning of the date it might be interpreted as "creepy pervert", while at the end it might well be "dashing".
posted by gjc at 6:55 AM on September 28

miagaille, that looks pretty close to what I saw. I'm gonna call this the hivemind coming through again.

gjc:of course the noise would be louder then the averages, that's why humans are great.
posted by sandswipe at 4:37 PM on September 28