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Nonverbal courtship patterns in women: Context and consequences
Abstract
There is a class of nonverbal facial expressions and gestures, exhibited by human females, that are commonly labeled “flirting behaviors.” I observed more than 200 randomly selected adult female subjects in order to construct a catalog of these nonverbal solicitation behaviors. Pertinent behaviors were operationally defined through the use of consequential data; these behaviors elicited male attention. Fifty-two behaviors were described using this method. Validation of the catalog was provided through the use of contextual data. Observations were conducted on 40 randomly selected female subjects in one of four contexts: a singles' bar, a university snack bar, a university library, and at university Women's Center meetings. The results indicated that women in “mate relevant” contexts exhibited higher average frequencies of nonverbal displays directed at males. Additionally, women who signaled often were also those who were most often approached by a man: and this relationship was not context specific.I suggest that the observation of women in field situations may provide clues to criteria used by females in the initial selection of male partners. As much of the work surrounding human attraction has involved laboratory studies or data collected from couples in established relationships, the observation of nonverbal behavior in field settings may provide a fruitful avenue for the exploration of human female choice in the preliminary stages of male-female interaction.
... In anthropological studies, a successful seduction leads to the establishment of a rapport, or intimate relationship, which also means that both parties can share information confidently, and this relationship also connects the two parties through intimate conversations (Moore, 1985). 16 This theory also applies to the matrilineal clan, the Mosuo. ...
... The same behaviors that are used to flirt are also used to indicate affiliation or agreement. For example, Moore [26] categorized flirting behaviors used by individuals in a bar. Some of the behaviors identified as flirting (e.g., smiling, nodding, laughing) have alternatively been characterized as behaviors indicating agreement and affiliation [27]. ...
The scholarship on flirting as a persuasive tactic in the workplace indicates that flirting can have negative consequences for task groups. The goal of this study was to extend the investigation of instrumental flirting by operationalizing this form of flirting as charm and by examining the consequences of charm in decision-making groups for the individual group members. In the current study, participants (60 women, 60 men) made decisions in four-person, mixed sex groups. The results of the study demonstrate that the use of charm was negatively associated with perceptions of group member task competence. Differences in perceptions of charm were also examined.
... Previous research has indicated that women use various nonverbal behavioral patterns, such as smiling, hair flipping, head tilting, and neck presentation, to show their interest and availability to men (Grammer, 1989;Moore, 1985;Wade et al., 2021). These patterns are known to attract men's attention and encourage them to approach women, and have been observed both in field settings (Moore & Butler, 1989) and laboratory settings (Grammer, 1990). ...
The arching of the back, known as lordosis, is a common behavior exhibited by many female animals to signal their sexual receptivity (Beach, 1976). This behavior involves curving the lower spine toward the belly, which serves as a reliable signal of sexual readiness in many nonhuman species. Studies have shown that lordosis elicits increased attention and copulation attempts from males, making it an important behavior for successful mating in these species (Flanagan-Cato, 2011; Henley et al., 2011; Pfaus & Gorzalka, 1987). Recently, Pazhoohi et al. (2018) have suggested that the lordotic posture or arching of the back in women may be a mechanism that is conserved across various taxa and may also signal sexual receptivity/proceptivity to men.
... Human females display and signal their interest and availability to men using a number of nonverbal behavioral patterns such as smiling, hair flipping, head tilting, and neck presentation (Grammer, 1989;Moore, 1985;Wade et al., 2021). These behavioral patterns that attract men's attention and solicit their approach to women are observed both in the field (Moore & Butler, 1989) and in laboratory settings (Grammer, 1990). ...
Objectives
Human females may attract men and solicit their approach through different nonverbal displays and signals. In many non-human animals, a lordosis posture in a female is a reliable signal of sexual receptivity. Recently, it has been argued that this posture is linked to a similar signal between men and women. The current research across three investigations aimed to test the predictions arising from the sexual receptivity hypothesis of lordosis posture.
Methods
Using realistic 3D generated stimuli, both men and women viewed women’s arched back postures in standing, supine and quadruped poses (Studies 1 and 2) and were asked to rate them for perceived sexual receptivity. In Study 3, a male model was used.
Results
In Study 1 we tested whether the arched back posture in women is an indicator of sexual receptivity. Results showed that both men and women associated increases in the arch of the back with higher sexual receptivity in women. Study 2 predicted and confirmed that sexual receptivity is also perceived from non-standing postures, namely supine and quadruped poses. Study 3 tested the prediction that the perception of sexual receptivity is specific to the posture being adopted by women.
Conclusion
Collectively this research provides support for the sexual receptivity hypothesis of lordosis posture by showing that sexual receptivity is perceived by an increase in the arch of the back (Study 1), it is perceived as sexually receptive irrespective of the body posture (Study 2), and this is specific to women (Study 3).
... Women are also likely to rate women negatively on traits such as intelligence, friendliness, and attractiveness, if they consider rivals as a threat to their current relationship [35]. Women employ different behavioral strategies to indicate their sexual interests to men [36,37]. For example, recent research has for the first time proposed and shown that women who display increased lumbar curvature and arch their backs, i.e., lordosis behavior, are perceived to be sexually receptive and more attractive [38,39]. ...
Women's breasts are considered sexually attractive because they may infer a woman's residual reproductive value. Given that men find women's breasts attractive, women may compete with other women to enhance their physical attractiveness when primed with an intrasexual competitive cue. The current study investigated women's intrasexual competition when viewing variations in breast morphology. Women (N = 189) were randomly assigned to a partner threat condition and shown images of women's breasts that included variations in breast size, ptosis (i.e., sagginess), and intermammary distance (i.e., cleavage). Women were more likely to report an increase in enhancing their appearance, wearing revealing clothing, dieting and exercising, and perceiving the breasts as a sexual threat as a function of larger breast sizes with low ptosis and intermediate distances. The partner threat prime did not play a role in ratings. Interestingly, there was a moderating role for women's dispositional levels in intrasexual competition. Women with higher levels of intrasexual competition were more likely to enhance their appearance when viewing large breast sizes. The study points to the role that breast morphology indicative of residual reproductive value has on increasing enhancement strategies.
... As such, gender is a robust predictor of self-reported flirtation tactics, even after controlling for sexual orientation, gender ideologies, and gender role adherence (Clark et al., 2021). Specifically, men are more likely to approach women and initiate an interaction, and they are more likely to do so when a woman has invited his approach by smiling, engaging in frequent eye contact, and flipping her hair (Moore, 1985). ...
Why do people fall in love? Does passion fade with time? What makes for a happy, healthy relationship? This introduction to relationship science follows the lifecycle of a relationship – from attraction and initiation, to the hard work of relationship maintenance, to dissolution and ways to strengthen a relationship. Designed for advanced undergraduates studying psychology, communication or family studies, this textbook presents a fresh, diversity-infused approach to relationship science. It includes real-world examples and critical-thinking questions, callout boxes that challenge students to make connections, and researcher interviews that showcase the many career paths of relationship scientists. Article Spotlights reveal cutting-edge methods, while Diversity and Inclusion boxes celebrate the variety found in human love and connection. Throughout the book, students see the application of theory and come to recognize universal themes in relationships as well as the nuances of many findings. Instructors can access lecture slides, an instructor manual, and test banks.
Et si on mettait de côté les clichés, les idées reçues, tout le " bullshit " qu'on entend régulièrement sur la communication non verbale et le comportement humain de manière générale ?
C'est l'ambition de cet ouvrage, qui éclaire de manière scientifique et ludique la signification des gestes et le pouvoir des mots de votre entourage – et de vous-même. L'auteure, Élodie Mielczareck, réputée pour ses analyses fines et sans concession de la sphère politique et des célébrités, y livre avec force détails, profondeur et humour toutes les clés de la communication au quotidien.
Vous découvrirez ainsi ce qui façonne les interactions humaines, dans le monde réel comme digital : les attitudes de séduction, de domination, de rejet, mais aussi le mensonge, la dissimulation et d'autres aspects de votre vie sociale.
Ces comportements nous concernent tous, nous sommes tous amenés à les adopter à un moment donné, en fonction du contexte et de notre personnalité. S'ils sont généralement temporaires, il peut arriver qu'ils s'inscrivent dans la durée et qu'ils soient vécus à l'extrême : cela, c'est la connerie... Alors imaginez tout le temps et l'énergie que vous allez économiser en repérant les cons de loin !
Free-standing social conversations constitute a yet underexplored setting for human behavior forecasting. While the task of predicting pedestrian trajectories has received much recent attention, an intrinsic difference between these settings is how groups form and disband. Evidence from social psychology suggests that group members in a conversation explicitly self-organize to sustain the interaction by adapting to one another’s behaviors. Crucially, the same individual is unlikely to adapt similarly across different groups; contextual factors such as perceived relationships, attraction, rapport, etc., influence the entire spectrum of participants’ behaviors. A question arises: how can we jointly forecast the mutually dependent futures of conversation partners by modeling the dynamics unique to every group? In this paper, we propose the Social Process (SP) models, taking a novel meta-learning and stochastic perspective of group dynamics. Training group-specific forecasting models hinders generalization to unseen groups and is challenging given limited conversation data. In contrast, our SP models treat interaction sequences from a single group as a meta-dataset: we condition forecasts for a sequence from a given group on other observed-future sequence pairs from the same group. In this way, an SP model learns to adapt its forecasts to the unique dynamics of the interacting partners, generalizing to unseen groups in a data-efficient manner. Additionally, we first rethink the task formulation itself, motivating task requirements from social science literature that prior formulations have overlooked. For our formulation of Social Cue Forecasting, we evaluate the empirical performance of our SP models against both non-meta-learning and meta-learning approaches with similar assumptions. The SP models yield improved performance on synthetic and real-world behavior datasets.
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Territorial behavior of the Uganda kob (Adenota kob thomasi; Reduncini, Hippotraginae) was studied in the Toro Game Reserve, western Uganda. Two types of territories were found: (a) small individual plots, 15-30 m in diameter, aggregated in tight clusters that are called leks, arenas, or territorial breeding grounds (TGs) ; (b) larger territories of 100-200 m diameter, distributed between the arenas, called single territories (STs). The largely permanent TGs, to which most of the breeding is confined, provide the basis for a social organization of the kob population of ca. 15 000. A certain number of kob are, by tradition, attached to a particular TG, so that the total population is subdivided into units, each associated with one TG. STs are spread out between the TGs; their size, number, and distribution vary with season and local conditions. There is an irregular gradient in size and density of territories from the center of a TG through the STs in its vicinity. STs may be aggregated in loose clusters used as temporary or seasonal TGs. Permanent TGs may arise from such clusters. Abandonment of existing and formation of new TGs are relatively rare. The males on the STs are strongly attached to confined areas which they defend against intruding males. Competition for STs is not intense, but males are occasionally replaced. Males defeated from their STs join a male herd and may attempt later to reoccupy the same ST, often successfully. Whistling probably serves for marking the territory or for attracting females to it. Herds of females often pass through or stay on STs, but the males do not possess harems. They court the female and attempt to copulate with them, but most females avoid their approaches. Few copulations occur on the STs; in several cases the females involved proved to be physiologically abnormal, and it is concluded that the males on STs do not contribute significantly to the reproduction of the population. The daily activity of males on the STs is compared with that of males on TGs. The latter spend less time for feeding and have less food available on their territories; this, combined with the higher proportions of fighting and sexual behavior on TGs, is propably the main reason for the much higher rate of interchange of males on TGs compared with STs. Also, the degree of competition for territories is higher on TGs than STS. The males of the kob population studied are, on the whole, divided into two categories: Those frequenting TGs, and those staying on STs. Both types join a male herd when they are not territorial. The age distribution among males on TGs and those on STs is largely equal. Some males occupied both territories on a TG and STs, but such cases are relatively rare. Two young-adult males first occupied a ST for some time, before they appeared on a TG, but this course of behavioral development does not seem to be the general rule. Territorial behavior was found in several other kob populations; the relative number of STs and the development of TGs vary considerably between different areas. Territoriality and lek behavior in other ungulates are briefly reviewed. The Uganda kob is the only antelope known, so far, to exhibit typical lek behavior. In addition, behavioral polymorphism such as the occurrence of different types of territories within the same population has not yet been found in any other species of antelopes. The following conclusions pertaining to the Uganda kob are drawn: STs are the original form of territoriality, still prevalent in small or marginal populations. In large and dense populations the formation of TGs offers certain ecologic advantages, such as providing a social organization and a spacing mechanism to the population and ensuring maximum efficiency of reproduction. Despite these advantages of TGs over STs the latter have not disappeared. Either they provide some social advantage, as yet unknown, or their persistence ensures adaptive plasticity of local populations and the species as a whole, to meet emergencies brought about by changes in the environment.
The structural-functional views of Talcott Parsons are used as the rationale for predicting sex differences in dating aspirations and partner satisfaction. Blind dates were arranged for 500 male and 500 female students by an I.B.M. computer. Evidence was found to support the hypotheses that 1) women would have higher aspirations for a dating partner, in the sense of more socially desired characteristics, than would men; and that 2) women would register a high degree of satisfaction less frequently than men following the first date. The findings are compared with popular notions of male-female tendencies for romantic love at first acquaintance.
This study investigates the role of female color, size, and dominance, and the influence of early color experience in mate selection by male Convict cichlids, Cichlasoma nigrofasciatum. Dark wild-type male fish were reared by dark parents in dark schools (dark homogenous group), and by mixed dark and white parents in mixed schools (dark mixed group), until sexual maturity. Correspondingly a white homogenous group and a white mixed group were also established. Each male was then allowed to choose a mate among two dark (mixed group) and two white (mixed group) females. Males tended to spawn more often with dark females and always spawned with dominant females. Female size is positively correlated with female dominance and this may be either as a cause or as an effect of female dominance. Early color experience appears to be unimportant in male mate selection.