To judge whether the other person is interested, watch behaviour not “signals”: who initiates, who arranges, who follows up

When strangers of opposite sex talk for about ten minutes and then judge each other, “the other person was not flirting” is judged fairly accurately, while “the other person was flirting” is hard to see. So do not conclude from faces and tone in one chat alone. People who like someone more are more likely later to message and suggest meeting, but that link is weak.

Cost

No money, and little time. The hard part is changing the habit: stop reading faces and tone, and start recording facts.

Benefit

Two studies measured how accurately people spot flirting. The first had 52 pairs of opposite-sex strangers talk for 10 to 12 minutes. Afterward each reported whether they had been flirting and whether they thought the other had. The result was that interactions with no flirting were judged more accurately, and interactions with flirting were judged worse. The second used 26 one-minute videos judged by 261 bystanders, with the same conclusion. People can fairly reliably see “the other person was not flirting,” but struggle to see “the other person was flirting.” A third study looked at behaviour. It pooled three speed-dating sessions, 559 people and more than 6600 dates, then followed up. The more distinctive one person’s liking for a given partner at the meeting, the more they later messaged and asked that person out. The average correlation for such links was about 0.15 (a weak association). That shows interest lands in behaviours like initiating contact and suggesting meetings. But this study did not compare behaviour against faces and tone for accuracy.

Notes

Controversial. Other research argues it is not that men overestimate women’s sexual intent, but that women under-report their own intent on questionnaires. Who judges more accurately is still unsettled. The first two studies did not measure behavioural cues. The third shows liking lands in messaging and asking someone out. But “behaviour is more accurate than faces and tone” has not been compared head-on in research; that is the author’s inference. The author suggests watching whether the other person initiates, arranges the next meeting, and follows up even when you do not push.

Sources · 2

1. Hall JA, Xing C, Brooks S (2015). Accurately detecting flirting: error management theory, the traditional sexual script, and flirting base rate. Communication Research, 42(7), 939-958. doi.org/10.1177/0093650214534972
2. Perilloux C, Kurzban R (2015). Do men overperceive women's sexual interest? Psychological Science, 26(1), 70-77. doi.org/10.1177/0956797614555727（争议方）；Baxter A, Maxwell JA, Bales KL, Finkel EJ, Impett EA, Eastwick PW (2022). Initial impressions of compatibility and mate value predict later dating and romantic interest. PNAS, 119(45), e2206925119. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206925119