How to Flirt — Backed by Scientific Research

Dr. Monica Moore, a psychologist at Webster University in St. Louis, has conducted research on the flirting techniques used in singles bars, shopping malls, and places young people go to meet each other. She 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. Just signaling your interest in someone gets you halfway there, whether you’re a man or a woman.

…the available evidence suggests that men and women around the world use many of the same nonverbal behaviors to communicate romantic interest… smiling and eye contact do appear to be universal methods used by men and women to convey romantic interest.

The behavior that participants rated as reflecting the most flirtation and the most romantic attraction was the soft face touch, followed by the touch around the shoulder or waist, and then the soft touch on the forearm. The least flirtatious and romantic touches were the shoulder push, shoulder tap, and handshake. Thus, touching that is gentle and informal, and that occurs face-to-face or involves “hugging” behavior, appears to convey the most relational intent.

For each scenario, participants indicated whether they believed the stranger was flirting with them or not. The results revealed significantly higher percentages of “yes” (i.e., flirting) responses when the stranger was in the restaurant bar as opposed to the school hallway (61% vs. 49%), when the stranger made an effort to go out of his or her way as opposed to making inadvertent and non-effortful eye contact (68% vs. 41%), and when the stranger paid a compliment as opposed to asking for the time (83% vs 26%). Not surprisingly, given this pattern of results, the scenario that produced the highest percentage of “yes” responses (74%) was that involving a stranger who went out of his or her way to compliment the target while in the “flirt-friendly” setting of a restaurant bar.

The results indicated that the men who successfully initiated romantic contact with women exhibited a greater number of particular kinds of nonverbal flirting behavior than men who did not establish romantic contact. Specifically, successful men directed more brief glances at their intended, engaged in a greater number of “space maximization” movements (positioning the body so that it takes up more space; e.g., extending one arm across an adjacent chair, stretching so that both arms extend straight up in the air), changed their location in the bar more frequently, and displayed greater amounts of non-reciprocated touching to surrounding men (e.g., playfully shoving, touching, or elbowing the ribs of other men). In discussing their findings, the researchers concluded that men who provide signals of their positive intentions (e.g., through glancing behaviors) and their status (e.g., through space maximization and non-reciprocated touch of male peers) receive preferential attention from women.

A more recent series of investigations by Vorauer and her colleagues (Vorauer, Cameron, Holmes, & Pearce, 2003) demonstrated that the fear of being rejected by a potential partner can produce yet another pernicious attributional bias. The “signal amplification bias” occurs when people believe that their social overtures communicate more romantic interest to potential partners than is actually the case and thus fail to realize that they have not adequately conveyed their feelings of attraction.