Sorry, guys – she’s not winking, she just has something in her eye.
A study by researchers at Indiana University and Humboldt University of Berlin found that it’s easier to figure out if a man likes a woman than vice versa. When it comes to love, men are more obvious and women more obscure.
The psychologists filmed a group of speed daters in Germany, then showed clips to Indiana students who didn’t speak German. Based on facial expression and body language alone, the subjects had to say whether they thought the woman was interested in the man and the other way around. Their responses were compared to the actual speed dating ratings.
The students were able to accurately predict male interest 61% of the time, but female interest only about 50% of the time. For the five “hardest to read” women, the researchers’ report says, the students got things wrong 80% of the time! Bad news for you hard-to-read ladies: the observers usually erred on the side of attraction, resulting in “a systematic over-perception of interest on the part of the female daters.” The findings probably won’t shock any boy who foolishly pursued the girl that smiled at him once in social studies. But it’s nice to have science on your side. “In order to evaluate potential mates longer without signaling their true intentions, women behave more covertly and ambiguously during initial interactions with the opposite sex,” the researchers concluded.