Husband Clothes

I love these articles that help me learn about the psychology of men, and namely, the psychology of my husband.

This article is scientific in nature. It’s on livescience.com–it doesn’t get much more scientific than that. I am positive this article was NOT supposed to be humorous or funny. However, I was laughing aloud as I read it.

I recommend that you read it: Clueless Guys Can’t Read Women. Then correct me if I’m wrong, here’s basically what the article says:

1) Don’t misread the title. It doesn’t mean “Only some guys are clueless–those guys can’t read women.” The title actually means “All guys are clueless and unable to read women.”

2) If you smile at a guy for any reason, he thinks you’re flirting. Frankly, I find this alarming. Girls smile at guys they feel sorry for, guys they are scared of, even guys they hate–just to make a situation less awkward. So, in summary, I guess this means geeks, psychopaths, and evil ex’s all over the world think girls are flirting with them when really they are just trying to think of a way to escape–the room, the seating arrangement, whatever.

3) Guys mistake friendliness for sexual come-on’s. Great, so, pretend you are a guy, and you need a dollar–say for a drink. If I give you this dollar to avoid thirsting to death, and I give it to you and smile (because I feel sorry for you at this moment)–does this imply I want to have SEX with you? I am assuming the answer is no. But based on this article, I am VERY nervous that the answer might be “yes.”

4) Guys mistake girls’ sexual signals as friendly ones. I love this. In this study, each guy was shown 280 photographs. In the ones that showed a female actually being alluring, most guys reported that she was giving friendly signals. Okay, so, if a girl smiles at a guy, she wants to have sex. If she, say, winks and gives him the sexy eye (not sure what that is, just trying to think of something alluring-sounding), she’s trying to be friends?

5) A common theory on guys’ misinterpretations, one of psychologists apparently, goes like this: due to the fact that men have an inherent, biologically based interest in sex, guys have lower standards for what qualifies as a sexual advance. However, the psychologists who designed this study said, “No, it’s not that guys have lower standards. It’s just that guys really can’t read signals correctly.”

Summary
So, it kind of seems like we’re back to square one here. Guys read women’s signals incorrectly. They interpret friendly signals as sexual ones–so to be sure we don’t tease anyone, girls should be careful about smiling, using nice voices, and generally being friendly. Guys interpret sexual signals as friendly ones. SO, if you are a girl trying to make sexual advances, don’t be surprised if you get invited to partake in a burping contest instead.

I hope you feel as enlightened as I do.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Dating, Habits, Theories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.