Sexual Intent, Perceptions of

Signs of Seduction

When people wish to communicate sexual interest and desire to others, they smile more, look longer, lean closer, and touch more than they do when they are merely being friendly. They laugh frequently, use an intimate tone of voice, and lick, bite, and touch their lips. If they are alone in a bar, women who display all of these signals are quite likely to be approached by men.

Male Misperceptions

Once conversation begins, there are two types of mistakes people can make in judging another person's interest in them. They may fail to notice that the other is interested and available, or alternatively, they may judge the other to be interested and accessible when he or she is not. As it turns out, one of these errors is much more likely than the other. On average, when men engage in small talk with women, they typically perceive the women to be more promiscuous and more sexually attracted to them than the women say they are. On occasion, these judgments may occur because the women are unintentionally behaving more provocatively than they intend. However, male and female observers of these interactions come to the same conclusions: Men who merely watch a woman conduct an affable conversation with another man judge her to be more interested in him as a sexual partner than female observers do. Whether they are participating in the interactions or simply listening in, men perceive women to be more sexually available and responsive than the women wish to seem (and other women think them to be).

Men and women also tend to differ in their interpretations of videotapes and written vignettes portraying sociable interactions with the other sex. On average, men perceive heterosexual interactions to have more sexual overtones than women do.

Why does this occur? Theorists have considered several possibilities that may all be influential. An evolutionary perspective suggests that modern men are attuned to the sexual implications of their interactions with women because it was more costly, in terms of reproductive success, for prehistoric men to be sexually inattentive than for them to be constantly on the prowl. Social role and social learning perspectives point out that people expect men to initiate sexual interactions and that many men have benefitted, at least now and then, from being pushy and assuming that women often feign disinterest when they are actually available. Men also tend to experience more frequent sexual arousal than women do, so sex is simply more often on their minds.

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