The new flirtation: cocktail of love and science to find a partner

In 1993, singer Haddaway asked the world, swaying his hips: “What is love?” It is not very well known if he obtained any conclusive answer, but more and more scientists are investigating if there is a kind of formula for flirting. "Don't hurt me... no more," the Trinidadian singer said in his songbreaker anthem. "I do not know what I can do. It's up to you," the song continued. Well, although love seems to be far removed from the cold and hard reality of science, more and more scientific publications try to shed light on the intricacies of getting together with another person.

American comedian Georges Burns once described love as something akin to back pain: "It doesn't show up on X-rays, but you know it's there," he said. Perhaps for this reason, the desire to start, maintain and expand a romantic relationship is even leading to the use of magnetic resonance imaging to try to rationalize something as elusive as attraction.

Formula to flirt

More and more scientific publications try to shed light on the intricacies of getting together with another person

A study titled Individual Differences in Communicating Romantic Interest: Development of the Flirting Styles Inventory, conducted by the University of Kansas, distinguishes, for example, between five types of flirting. Namely: the traditional flirting style (which leads to behaving following the traditional roles in courtship, that is, the man being the one who initiates the relationship and takes the first verbal step); physical flirting (where the possibility of sexual contact is an important component, leading to showing off body parts and strutting); sincere flirting (marked by the desire to create an emotional bond with a potential romantic partner); the playful or playful flirting style (according to which flirting is, above all, something fun that does not necessarily imply the beginning of a relationship) and polite flirting.

The question: which is the best? According to this research, the playful style is the worst valued by women. In contrast, physical, sincere, and playful styles were correlated with greater dating success. Specifically, the sincere and physical flirting style produced a greater emotional connection and more sexual chemistry.

The above work suggests that once the mind decides that it likes someone as a potential partner, the body automatically begins to change physically to attract that person. The problem arises when the person in front does not know how to interpret the signals. Because…is there a facial expression that represents flirting?

In February 2021, a team of American and English researchers published in the Journal of Sex Research the study Identification of a flirtatious facial expression and its effect on men. Their conclusion was that the facial cues of flirtation best recognized by men include “a head turned to the side and tilted slightly downward, a slight smile, and eyes looking toward the implied target.”

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The Language of Flirting

However, it's not just men who have problems with non-verbal language. In The Science of Love and Attraction, a book published in 2020, neuroscientist M. Oktar Guloglu points out that today only 28% of people perceive correctly if someone flirts with them.

The fact that flirting is increasingly being studied by the social sciences, psychobiology or neuroscience may respond to a surprising fact that surveys are beginning to reflect: a Despite the appearance of dating apps like Grindr or Tinder and the match culture, it is increasingly difficult to find a partner who is not a flash in the pan. As a button shows: According to a survey conducted in the US before the pandemic, almost half of Americans say that finding a partner is much more difficult now than it was ten years ago. Dating apps, other research confirms, have made it considerably easier to meet potential lovers, but far more difficult to fall in love and stay in love.

Flirting

Today only 28% of people perceive correctly if someone flirts with them

In a veiled or explicit way, some research suggests why it is now so difficult to find couple. One possible reason is the fear of losing better options in a context of thousands of candidates within reach of a click. Other recurring reasons are lack of patience, the search for immediate gratification, superficiality, the meteoric rise of egoism, and the increase in cases of sexual harassment.

Express dating is leading to a neglect of courtship, something that is beginning to be picked up in the scientific literature. For example, a 2020 study titled Can I have your phone number? suggests that there are certain strategies better than others for getting a phone number or setting up a new date.

The question posed by the research is: how do men react to the phrases women use to pick up? To find out, the scientists asked a sample of women to report how they would approach and start talking to an unknown man. The most common tactic was to walk up, say hello, and start a conversation. From here, three paths were open: use innocuous phrases such as the initial Hello or "where did you get your tattoo? did it hurt?"; be more direct ("Can I have your phone number?") or throw in fun and flirty lines ("Can I take a picture of you to show Santa Claus what I want for Christmas?" or "Your body is about 65% water and I'm thirsty").

Subsequently, heterosexual men were asked to rate the effectiveness of the phrases. In the study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, the researchers noted, "initial communication is critical in determining whether or not an interaction and subsequent relationship will continue." The result was predictable: men prefer women to be direct rather than use frivolous or harmless phrases, the latter being the least preferred, since when flirting phrases are very innocuous they do not realize that a woman may be flirting .

As for women, some previous research suggested that they generally preferred men with a sense of humor, which could lead one to think that phrases like "can I buy you an island?" or "I would like to live with you in a cave and hunting dinosaurs for you should be their favorites", when just the opposite is true. In general, women are more receptive to harmless phrases, followed by direct ones. On the other hand, less serious pick-up lines are often not effective for their intended purpose, the study suggests that women perceive them as typical of people who are not trustworthy.

The price of the ideal partner

The fact that it is increasingly difficult to find the needle in the haystack is motivating some dating platforms to try to apply scientific methods. This is the case, for example, of the company Alcanda Matchmaking, which promotes itself by offering procedures similar to those used to recruit senior managers, which is why it includes three quality standards: UNE 93200, ISO 9001 and ISO 10667. .

According to Verónica Alcanda, director of Alcanda Matchmaking, the fact that the new status symbol of the 21st century is being very busy is leaving business and financial elites with no time for something as mundane as finding a partner, favoring what Alcanda called "the loneliness of the leader."

US executives pay a million dollars to find the ideal partner

It seems that many top American executives (and increasingly European ones) pay between $100,000 and $200,000, “ and in some cases, up to a million”, says Alcanda, for finding the ideal couple in a scientific way. The same is happening in Great Britain, where this select service ranges between 15,000 and 100,000 pounds sterling (between 17,500 and 117,000 euros).

The money invested, explains this former executive who acknowledges having spent a large part of her life looking for a prince charming, "despite the fact that we all know they don't exist", gives the right to meet a minimum of five candidates in six months or eight people in a year. “Women tend to be much more demanding because they want everything. On the other hand, men are more physical, so if the candidate is attractive, the other requirements are no longer a sine qua non condition”, he acknowledges.

To refine as much as possible, Alcanda says that ten economic rules are applied to the search for a partner, in order of importance. The first rule says: "Faced with a commodity market, it is important to differentiate yourself and stand out from the rest of the people who are looking for the same objective." Here is the second rule: "Delay your payback, that is, despite the fact that sex on the first date is the order of the day, sometimes it is also advisable to wait a bit if you really want to meet a person or if we believe that it can be a stable couple. Revealing information about us little by little delays your pay back and increases your value”.

There are other rather curious rules. The fourth rule, for example, recommends diversifying the portfolio: “in love, as in the economy, to check if an investment is safe, you must adopt different levels of risk and check which one works best. If those people with whom you take the greatest risk do not offer the expected return, there will always be those with less risk but greater guarantee”. Nor is the seventh rule wasted: “Set your second best option. Ultimately, this will give you a greater return because, as we all know, appearance is overvalued in the present but depreciates over time."

There are more and more investigations that highlight that every time we flirt worse

Alcanda explains that his company has launched a program called How to become a Gentleman (How to become a gentleman) that aims to recover values lost. "What women value most today is honesty and commitment." As for men, in addition to loyalty, they demand, Alcanda points out, "that in addition to being successful and powerful they do not lose their femininity," she points out.

So far, some 200 people have already used this service, estimates Alcanda. However, more and more research shows that we flirt worse and worse, and more and more scientists are trying to create formulas that bring some order to something as personal and non-transferable as finding someone who loves us.

Couples who live together for a long time can develop similar facial features. For Robert Zajonc, the psychologist at the University of Michigan who promoted this research, the increase in facial similarity is the result of decades of shared emotions. What's more, couples who didn't look particularly alike when they got married or became involved, after 25 years of marriage or togetherness, came to resemble each other, even if the resemblance was subtle. At the time, Dr. Zajonc argued, in explaining his findings, that factors such as similar diets, and therefore fatty tissue deposits, may contribute to the similarity, but are not crucial. Instead, people who have been together for many years often unconsciously tend to imitate the facial expressions of their spouses, out of a silent empathy which, over the years, shapes the face in a similar way as a result of sharing the same expressions. same expressions.

Psychologist John Gottman has spent more than 40 years analyzing the psychology of love, which has allowed him to reach some conclusions. After following the evolution of many couples over the decades, this clinical psychologist from the University of Washington concludes that there are four things that kill relationships deadly: repeated criticism, many expressions of contempt such as sarcasm and cynicism, being permanently defensive and blocked from the other person so that communication shuts down almost completely.

Modern marriages call for self-actualization, research recalls. Unlike in the past, when the main objective was to obtain security, now people claim to obtain psychological satisfaction from the relationship and that the emotional attachment allows them to travel to self-realization.

The relationship after divorce or separation leads to separated parents, basically, to five scenarios: 1-Dissolved duos where (usually) the father disappears; 2-Perfect friends where parents are still best friends; 3-Partners who cooperate; 4-Angry partners, where the fight continues after the separation; 5-Fierce enemies where children become pawns and generally suffer as a result of disputes