Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Club, this week we present the paper “Can I have your numer? Men’s perceived effectiveness of pick-up lines used by women” by Fisher, L. M.; Coughlin, S. and Wade, T. J. (2020), in which authors wonder which are the most effective pick-up lines used by women to flirt with men, according to men’s perceptions.
One of the areas in which knowing nonverbal communication and nonverbal behavior is more interesting is flirting.
Both men and women worry about how they are perceived by the sex they are interested in, and not few work in order to improve this. In fact, we are sure that all of us have think of any strategy to be more attractive to our love interest’s eye.
One of the most interesting points of nonverbal behavior applied to flirting, is how conversations focused on dating are started. Which approximation will guarantee us success? Which one shall we avoid?
Most of the research on pick-up lines pertains to how men commonly use them to encourage conversation with women, to impress them. That is why authors decided to carry out this experiment focusing on the contrary, on the other side of the story: women perceived by men.
There is a variety of pick-up lines, which have been categorized in many ways. Authors use the categories of direct (“You are hot, can I have your number?), innocuous (“Can you recommend me a drink?”) and flippant (“Can I get a picture of you so I can show Santa what I want for Christmas?”).
Generally, women are most receptive to innocuous lines followed by direct lines. On the contrary, the ones that would be less appealing to them would be flippant lines. It could be because women may perceive flippant line users as unintelligent or untrustworthy.
Men, on the other hand, and according to previous research, would be more receptive to direct lines, followed by flippant ones; feeling less attracted to innocuous lines. It may be due to these lines not being explicit.
Nevertheless, studies until today have been historically focused on these pick-up lines rather than the appearance of the people using them. That is why authors decided to carry out the experiment bearing in mind that attractiveness could affect to the effectiveness of the pick-up lines.
Hypotheses are two: first, that women using direct pick-up lines would be rated as being the most effective when trying to pick-up men for the purpose of dating; second, that men would rate the pick-up lines used by highly attractive women dressed in a highly promiscuous way as more effective than the pick-up lines used by women who were less attractive and promiscuous.
To prove these hypotheses, authors carry out to pilot studies in order to gather information so they able to perform the main experiment.
The first of these pilot studies was conducted to ensure women use pick-up lines, and if so, which types of lines. Women were presented a hypothetical scenario, in which they had to think what they would say to flirt with a man in a bar. A series of pick-up lines were obtained, and later used in the main experiment.
The second pilot study was used to determine which photographs would be used in the experiment. Participants were shown a series of photographs of women and were asked to classify them according to how attractive and promiscuous they seemed. With the obtained results, authors selected twelve of these pictures, three in each one of the four following categories: high attractiveness/low promiscuousness, high attractiveness/high promiscuousness, low attractiveness/high promiscuousness and low attractiveness/low promiscuousness.
130 heterosexual men participated in the main experiment. They were asked to answer a questionnaire with the twelve chosen pictures, classified as the four categories previously mentioned. Each one of these photographs were assigned a pick-up line, it could be direct, innocuous or flippant.
One more time, a hypothetical scenario was presented, in which these men had to guess what would be the effectiveness of these twelve women in the photographs when it comes about flirting with an heterosexual man, bearing in mind how attractive and promiscuous these women seemed.
Obtained results suggested that men prefer direct lines over flippant and innocuous lines (these would be the least preferred).
Plus, perceived attractiveness plays a more significant role than perceived promiscuousness.
Women in the high attractiveness and high promiscuousness condition were rated to be the most effective.
Namely, the hypotheses authors thought about at the start of the paper, would be confirmed.
Flippant lines deserve particular attention, because their results offer conflicting information.
For instance, previous research suggest that women prefer funny men with a good sense of humor, as it shows off their intelligence and creativity. This makes us think that flippant lines should be the most successful. But that is not the case, flippant lines would be the least preferred by women.
Men do not particularly like funny women, instead they like women who enjoy their sense of humor. These findings suggest that men would be less receptive to flippant lines, but men preferred flippant lines more than innocuous lines in the current study.
There were some limitations in the experiment. For example, women used in the photographs were all models. Thus, these women are not representative of the general population. Besides, rating photographs and stated pick-up lines is far less realistic than being approached by women in real life, due to other elements, as prosodic, that would be very important.
