Science knows how to get you into someone’s pants, and the big secret is this – leave them in no doubt whatsoever that you are flirting with them. After copious research into flirting techniques in singles bars, shopping malls and coffee shops, psychologist Monica Moore of Webster University in St Louis has concluded that 'it’s not the most physically appealing people who get approached, but the ones who signal their availability and confidence through basic flirting techniques like eye contact and smiles.' Signal your interest and you’re halfway there, for men and women who want to attract men or women.
Not only do you not need to be good-looking, you don't need to be particularly creative with your flirting. The good news for anyone who thinks they’re a terrible flirt (as opposed to a ‘terrible flirt’, aka a prolific and prodigious flirt) is that flirting has less to do with subtlety, sophistication and sex appeal, and more to do with making it blindingly obvious to your target that you’re flirting with them. By using obvious totally-flirting-with-you right-now techniques like ‘eye contact’ and ‘smiling’ and the loudest flirt-klaxon, ‘touching.’
But if you want to take your flirting beyond GCSE to A-level, past the ‘universal methods’ of smiling, eye-contact and touching, things get a little bit weird. Men and women are advised to flirt differently, in thoroughly heterocentric advice that all sounds a bit 1980s dating manual. Women are encouraged to ‘hair flip’ and ‘lick lip’ and ‘establish you are hard to get in general, but very enthusiastic about the person you are with.’ Lame. Men, on the other hand, get to have all the fun, and they’re exempt from humiliating hair-flickage. Research shows that flirting which emphasises physical attractiveness is useless to men; instead, effective flirting involves displays of social dominance. 'Successful men directed more brief glances at their intended, engaged in a greater number of “space maximisation” movements (positioning the body so that it takes up more space, like extending one arm across an adjacent chair, stretching by momentarily extending both arms up in the air) and displayed non-reciprocated touching to surrounding men, such as playful shoving." Researchers concluded that men who provide signals of their positive intentions, coupled with their status, receive preferential attention from women.
We think flirting like a man sounds way more fun. Stretching and shoving? We’ll take that over hair-flicking and lip-licking any day of the week. Or perhaps we’ll stick to a good old-fashioned smile…
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Photograph: Lukasz Wierzbowski
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.