jabebe 2008-3-31 03:38 PM
Males fail to take hint in flirting
Males fail to take hint in flirting
The flutter of eyelashes, the smile across the dance floor and the giggle after a lame joke - every woman knows the time- honored ways to get a man.
But research suggests that the flirty female is wasting her time. Men, it seems, are blind to the subtle seduction techniques of the opposite sex.
Short of pouncing on the object of her lust, a woman's non-verbal signals of sexual interest often prove sadly lost on the young male brain, according to a study to be published next month in Psychological Science.
Researchers at Indiana University used nearly 300 undergraduates of both sexes to test abilities to spot a come-on. The students were asked to view images of women and categorize them as friendly, sexually interested, sad or rejecting.
Male students commonly mistook women's sexual signals as merely friendly and were prone to see friendliness as a blatant advance.
Kathy Lette, the best-selling author, said the research was further evidence of women's superiority. "Women are fluent in body language, men just have the gift of the grab," she said.
Not all flirting gets lost in translation. Coreen Ferris, the lead researcher, said: "These are average differences. Some men are skilled in reading clues."
