A new study shows that guys mistake friendly gestures by women as sexual come-ons, and sexual come-ons as friendly gestures. Thus guaranteeing us a life of misery and solitude unless by sheer dumb luck we're tackled on the sofa by our to-be paramour. So to all my female "friends" who really were just willing me to jump them, much apologies.
Also, Ezra's right: examples of which signals were which would have been a nice addition to the article.
(Men, of course, as so tastefully commented by LitBrit, er, "wear their hearts on their sleeves", if you will).
I assume Ezra was joking, since the point of the study seems to be that men have difficulty reading non-verbal cues -- my cousin is ready to diagnose one of his friends as having mild Asperger's for just how bad he is at this. I think that's part of why a certain kind of guy embraces social interaction on the internet to the exclusion of offline interaction -- the former is by necessity all verbal, down to the emoticons.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the researchers would be doing y'all a service by blanketly stating, "If she makes eye contact, she's interested," because of the infinite variety and nuance of eye contact -- and the possibility that she's actually got such a bad crush on you that she has trouble looking you in the eye, versus the possibility that she's hoping if she doesn't look you in the eye, you'll go away.
I will concede that in a yes/no frame, men's interest is generally easier to read, but it's very difficult to tell *what* they're interested in (flirting? one night stand? white picket fence?).
Well, maybe a couple of pictorial examples would have been nice ("I've seen that look before! It's from that girl who I was best friends with all through high school! I assumed it was her 'I'm there for you' look, not the 'I want your body now' look!")
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