Is It Flirting, or Just Friendly?

Most people find it hard to tell the difference between someone being friendly and someone being interested. The research on this is unusually clear, and it shows which direction you are likely to get it wrong.

It is one of the most common questions I get, in one form or another. Was that flirting, or were they just being nice? People ask it about a coworker, a classmate, someone at the gym, a person they have been talking to for weeks. And underneath the question is usually a worry about looking like a fool.

Here is what the research says, along with the signs worth watching.

Men and women misread it in opposite directions

In 1988, two psychologists named Shotland and Craig ran a study asking whether people are able to tell the difference between friendly behavior and sexually interested behavior. They found that people can tell the difference.

But where people draw the line depends on who is doing the reading. Men consistently perceive more interest in a situation than is actually there. Women consistently perceive less.

A more recent study put numbers on how hard this is in practice. Researchers paired college men and women for ten-minute conversations and afterward asked each person whether they had flirted, and whether they thought their partner had. Both groups were good at spotting when someone was not flirting, over eighty percent accurate. But at recognizing when someone was flirting, men got it right about a third of the time and women about a fifth.

In other words, your gut tends to be wrong in a predictable direction, and a predictable error can be corrected.

What that means for you

If you are a man, you are inclined to read interest into ordinary friendliness. She is being warm because she is a warm person, and you are reading it as interest. That is worth knowing before you act on a feeling.

If you are a woman, you have the opposite problem. You are inclined to file genuine interest under he was just being nice. When you catch yourself concluding that, it is worth looking again.

In both cases the correction is the same. Stop trusting your overall sense of how it is going, and start reading specific behavior instead.

Look for several signs together

Any single signal on its own means very little. Someone laughing at your joke or touching your arm once could mean anything, because plenty of people are warm to everyone.

What means something is several signals pointing the same direction at the same time. These are the ones to watch.

Eye contact, and especially the second look. One glance could be anything, but eyes that look away and then come back are looking on purpose. That second look is one of the more reliable signals.

Where their body is pointed. Are they facing you squarely? Feet are especially telling, because people tend to point their feet at whatever holds their interest and rarely think about where their feet are pointing. If they are sitting, watch their knees.

The length of their answers. This might be the most useful cue on the list. An interested person gives you long, detailed answers, because they want the conversation to keep going. Short answers, over and over, usually mean the opposite.

Mirroring. When you shift your weight and they shift theirs, or you pick up your drink and they pick up theirs a moment later, they are paying close attention to you without realizing it. People rarely do this on purpose, which is why it is worth noticing.

Whether they keep the conversation going. Are they asking you things? Bringing up something you mentioned earlier? Finding reasons for the conversation to continue? People do that when they want more of it.

When several signs agree, believe them

When four of those point the same way, it is worth trusting, even if a voice in your head argues with it.

And when the signs point the other way, believe that just as quickly. Short answers, a body angled toward the exit and eyes wandering around the room are also an answer, and accepting it gracefully the first time is one of the more attractive things a person can do.

None of this makes you a mind reader, but it replaces a feeling you now know is unreliable with things you can actually observe. Reading people well is a skill, and it can be trained.