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Humans are terrible at flirting, concluded a University of Kansas study.
Most men and women are really bad at identifying a flirt when they see one, but are much better at figuring out when others are just not interested, according to lead researcher Jeffrey Hall.
The key to letting someone know you like them is to abandon all subtlety, Hall advises, although that would raise new questions about the boundaries between flirting and being just plain old creepy.
"If you think someone is not interested in you, you are probably right, they are not interested," Hall said through a news release.
"But if someone is, you probably missed it."
In a study published in the journal Communication Research, Hall's team of researchers brought together 52 pairs of single, heterosexual college students. The pairs of strangers sat alone in a room and talked for 10 to 12 minutes in what they thought was a study on first impressions.
At the end of the study, the students were asked to fill out questionnaires in separate rooms. Among other things, students had to note if they flirted and if they thought their counterpart had.
While the pairs were more than 80 percent accurate in knowing when their counterpart was not flirting, they were far less accurate in detecting when they were being flirted with.
Only 36 percent of men judged correctly and for women the number was only 18 percent.
"Behavior that is flirtatious is hard to see, and there are several reason for that," Hall said.
"People aren't going to do it in obvious ways because they don't want to be embarrassed, flirting looks a lot like being friendly, and we are not accustomed to having our flirting validated so we can get better at seeing it."
