Women should forget small talk and flirting if they want to chat-up a man, because according to new research, the way to a man’s heart is by giving him no room to misunderstand your intentions.

A study by Scientists at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, USA, found that while women may be attracted to men who have a way with words, men prefer a direct, no-nonsense approach when being chatted up by women – since they had trouble ‘reading’ hints, even if they were accompanied by coy smiles and  body language; according to the research reported in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Researchers asked a group of forty women for their top chat-up lines (or things they might say to a man to indicate that they were interested in dating or spending time with him), they then put the fifty most popular suggestions to a panel of 38 women and 32 men, asking the participants to rate how effective the lines would be in practice.

The lines fell into ten categories:

• Directly asking someone on a date
• Hinting at a date
• Statements of commonalities
• Insistence on calling or giving of a phone number
• Compliments
• Directly asking about relationship status
• Statements of personal interest
• Sexual humour
• Questions of familiarity
• Saying a subtle “Hello”

The women believed that giving subtle cues or talking about common interests would perform better than they actually did – assuming the men would respond to the same things they thought women responded to best – whilst the men responded differently. Women also thought that offering their phone number would not go over very well, when in fact, the men concluded that direct approaches such as invitations to dinner or the cinema were most appealing, followed by an exchange of phone numbers and then straightforward questions such as “Do you have any plans for later?” and “What are you doing tonight?”.

Some women also rated the direct approach highly, but most women were impressed with those lines which were designed to establish some common interests between them and the man who was chatting them up (which men rated 5^th).

The least successful tactics were smiles or lines such as “Do I know you from somewhere? You look very familiar.” or “Hello, how’s it going?”, which offered no indication as to the type of interaction desired. These were slightly less successful than supposedly humorous lines, such as “Where have you been my all life?”, “Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?” and “Your shirt matches my bedspread – you belong in my bed”, for both men and women.

Psychologist Dr Joel Wade said:

The direct indication of a possible date as well as the hint of a possible date gives the man a clear signal – instead of sending mixed non-verbal signals that the man must decipher.

He added that straightforward suggestions removed any “uncertainty regarding the outcome of the interaction“.

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Posted by Jonathan in Anthropology, Psychology

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