How to Tell If Someone Is Flirting With You, According to Science
In the days when we actually interacted with other people in real life, it wasn’t always clear if someone was friendly, wanted something from you, or was actually flirting. After months of isolation, we probably haven’t gotten any better at this. If you are someone who likes to rely on data to manage your personal relationships, then you might be interested in the results of a recent study that identified three of the most commonly used facial expressions in flirting. Here’s what you need to know.
Flirting faces
The study, published in the Journal of Sex Research , involved coding and then analyzing various facial expressions to determine which ones were most commonly perceived as flirting. While research has focused on how men pick up flirting in women, the results may make sense in other contexts as well.
“For the first time, we were not only able to isolate and identify expressions that constitute flirting, but we were also able to identify their function: to activate associations related to relationships and sex,” said Omri Gillat , Ph.D., professor of psychology at KU, who wrote the article together. with Cornell University professor Parny Hai-Mohamadi , Ph.D., and Erica Rosenberg , Ph.D. at UC Davis, told Cosmopolitan .
So, without further ado, here are these facial expressions:
- The head is turned to one side and tilted slightly downward.
- Light smile
- Eyes turned forward turned an implied target
“In our six studies, we found that most men could recognize a certain female facial expression as flirting,” Gillat explained. “It has a unique morphology and differs from expressions with similar features – like a smile – but not identified by men as flirting expressions.”
Will we ever get to the point where we can test these discoveries face to face with other people? Who knows! Do they also apply in the context of scaling? May be? But if you do find yourself on a Zoom or FaceTime date , here are some tips on how to be successful.