Why some men can’t tell with flirting

It’s a scene played out in thousands of movies and TV shows. A male actor walks into a room and locks eyes with an attractive female. He smiles. She smiles back. Is she being seductive, conspiratorial, or maybe just polite?

New research shows that a fun- damental trait of the male psyche strongly influences how a man interprets those possibly flirtatious looks.

“Heterosexual men consistently overperceive women’s sexual interest,” writes Joshua Hart, associate professor of psychology at Union College.

Hart takes us into the world of personality factors, specifically something called the adult attachment system. Psychologists use it to help understand how we behave in close relationships, including romantic ones.

Someone with high attachment anxiety tends to seek constant love and reassurance, and to fear rejection. Those with a high degree of attachment avoidance try to minimize the chance of emotional pain by avoiding deep intimacy. They are reluctant to trust and rely on others.

“Because the two dimensions are independent,” Hart writes, “it is possible for people to be high or low in both.”

The most needy guys, those with the highest attachment anxiety, tended to imagine themselves as being more flirtatious which in turn caused them to view the women as being more flirtatious. The opposite was true of those with attachment avoidance. They figured the women probably weren’t interested in them, and their own flirtation sails went down, too.

How do men acquire attachment anxiety or attachment avoidance? Hart writes that these personality traits are “thought to be forged in the context of life experiences in close relationships.”