Elizabeth Clark

Professor Kothari - COMM.357.01

‘The Mysteries of Courtship’

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 Communication is a key aspect of how organisms thrive amongst one another, this

includes us as human beings. This communication can be verbal, which is the words you say,

and non-verbal, your tone of voice and body language – both types are useful in getting your

point across but one of them is a more powerful tool. We have been socialized to think what we

say holds more weight than what we don’t say but this is incorrect. From what I have been taught

in other Communication courses, about 90% of what we absorb in interactions is non-verbal

while less than 10% of what we pay attention too is the spoken word. This suggests an

interesting pattern for how humans attempt to express their romantic interest. Flirting is a huge

aspect of how we as animals interact. Studying it can give us insight into what we value as a

society in terms of prospective mates and our courtship rituals. But it can also tell us how men

and women act differently and similarly, whether they stick to the more traditional gender roles

or if they are reversed.

In this paper we will be looking in depth at how men and women differ in flirting styles,

techniques, and patterns with their romantic interest. By looking at these interactions we can see

how the individuals who identify with different genders communicate their interest in someone,

which will allow us to notice gendered patterns or behaviors. The importance in this is seeing

how men and women have been socialized to express affection, care, and romantic interest in a

person. We live in a society where so many things are gendered and the act of flirting is likely no

exception to this facet of how we were raised to act.

According to Dryden Henningsen (2004), “Men tend to view flirting as more sexual than

women do, and women attribute more relational and fun motivations to flirting interactions than

do men” (p. 481-489). That finding can lead to so many more like whether the flirting styles of

men and women follow a similar pattern – men being more sexual and women more coy. Along

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with the traditional concept of flirting where you are speaking to each other in person, we have to

think about how the digital age has shifted these patterns. Whitty (2004) suggests that we have

much more to study, “in making this argument, it is contended that online flirting has unique

aspects in comparison to offline flirting” (p. 115-125).

In this paper I interviewed college students in order to understand how they court

potential romantic partners and/or how they interact with their significant other. I recruited

fifteen students on campus to fill out a survey that I created to use as my primary source for

information. The community I focused on was broad in the sense that it spanned across many

demographics with the one constant being their status as a college student. Because the purpose

was to find patterns of behavior across multiple genders and sexual orientations, their age and

status as a student were being used as guidelines to make the process easier. Since I am

surrounded by my peers every day, it made sense to use what was available to me in order to

conduct my survey – hence my focus on college students as the community.

My survey consisted of ten questions, most were multiple choice with an option for

“other” where the participant would then explain their answer. Starting off the survey were

questions regarding the demographics of the participants: their gender identity, sexual

orientation, and their age. From there I asked questions regarding their current relationship

status, how they show interest, how they know they are the object of someone else’s interest,

whether they had ever misinterpreted someone’s feelings for them, etc. As a busy student my

participants were simply anyone near me who agreed to take the survey I offered. Unfortunately

this didn’t provide a very comprehensive population: of my fifteen participants, there was one

male, twelve females, and two individuals who did not identify within the traditional binary of

gender. However, when you intersect the gender identities and sexual orientations of the

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participants, the population really was diverse and included many demographics. My choice of

topic was almost entirely personal interest, as someone who is very unsure of the “world of

flirting” and/or romance, I found myself curious as to how my peers went about it and whether

there were behavioral patterns I could pinpoint.

For some background information on why one of the answer choices for my question

“how do you show your interest in a potential romantic partner?” was “stare at/watch them”, I

will be discussing an article by Beth Quinn where the concept of “girl watching” is introduced.

Quinn (2002) wrote that, “in particular, girl watching works as a dramatic performance played to

other men, a means by which a certain type of masculinity is produced and heterosexual desire is

displayed”. Based on her article and the information she gathered, this concept of girl watching

is both a way for heterosexual men to bond as well as a way to show their interest in a woman. I

intentionally added the option “stare at/watch them” in order to see how common of a practice it

is for both men and women but also as a way to incorporate our class readings. This idea of girl

watching is admittedly tied to sexual harassment, Quinn flipped the roles on the men she

interviewed in her journal in an attempt to point out the harm that this activity causes to the

subject of the men’s gaze.

Nonetheless, he produced an account that mirrored the stories of some of the women I

interviewed. He knew the experience of girl watching could be quite different – in fact,

threatening and potentially disempowering – for the woman who is its object. As such, the

game was something to be avoided. In imaging themselves as women, the men remembered

the practice of girl watching. None, however, were able to comfortably describe the game of

girl watching from the perspective of a woman and maintain its (masculine) meaning as

play. (Quinn, 2002, p. 530)

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 By flipping the script on the men who were interviewed, Quinn found a pattern that

suggested men became uncomfortable when they see their own actions from the view of the

woman being watched. Earlier in the interviews, the men she spoke to were seemingly unaware

or unwilling to see the damage they inflicted on their female counterparts because of their

behaviors. This was attributed to the idea that men and women are socialized differently in our

society and that the basis for what is acceptable when expressing sexuality is very different for

men and women. However, Quinn did take notice of changes with the men she spoke to after she

had them look from the woman’s perspective:

In attempting to take up the subject position of a woman, these men are necessarily

drawing on knowledge they already hold. If men simply “don’t get it” – truly failing to

see the harm in girl watching or other more serious acts of sexual harassment – then they

should not be able to see this harm when envisioning themselves as women. What the

interviews reveal is that many men – most of whom failed to see the harm of many acts

that would constitute the hostile work environment form of sexual harassment – did in

fact understand the harm of these acts when forced to consider the position of the targeted

woman. (Quinn, 2002, p. 530)

By doing more and more research as well as paying attention to previously done studies

revolving around flirting and courtship, we can build our knowledge on the topic. The

importance of the topic isn’t just for personal tips and information – by looking more closely at

the patterns, we can alter the trainings done at companies and schools regarding sexual

harassment and how to abstain from it. Looking at or watching someone you are romantically

interested in is rarely mentioned during discussions about sexual harassment. Which is not to say

simply looking at them is harassment, but that there is a fine line that is too often crossed and

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updating the information we teach at trainings can go a long way in making that line more

defined.

The first section of my findings that I plan to discuss relate to the issue of gender roles

and whether men and women stick to the traditional concept of how they are expected to show

interest in someone. When formulating my survey for this paper, I made the choice to include

questions regarding the dominance and/or passiveness of the participant as well as their

preference for how their romantic interest behaved during courtship. Of the twelve women who

took the survey, there was an almost even split regarding their draw towards being passive or

dominant when flirting. Despite the concept of traditional gender roles which state that women

should be more meager and shy, seven of the twelve women self-reported as taking a dominant

role when engaging with their romantic interest. The one man who agreed to take my survey

self-reported as being dominant as well, which holds true to the traditional roles. However, since

there was only one man who answered, I can hardly make the claim that men tend to gravitate

towards being dominant as I would not be providing a representative sample of men. In regards

to the last two participants who identified outside of the gender binary, one reported to be more

passive and the other chose neither option. Keeping in mind that my survey is not a truly

comprehensive representation of men and women’s behaviors, a study done by Frisby, Dillow,

Gaughan, and Norland found something different:

Overall, men are perceived as more dominant and as more affiliative than women in the

context of a flirtatious encounter. Men were rated as especially dominant when flirting

for sexual reasons. These Sex Roles (2011) findings may have emerged because of the

display of communicative behaviors evident in stereotypical gender roles (Archer 1996;

Bem 1974), in which men may exhibit masculine traits (e.g., assertiveness) and women

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 exhibit feminine traits (e.g., responsiveness). In addition, scholars (Archer 1996; Greer

and Buss 1994) have reported that men, not women, characteristically initiate romantic

and sexual encounters. The assertiveness required to initiate interactions and engage in

flirting may be perceived by third party observers as dominant. (Frisby, Dillow, Gaughan

& Norland, 2011, p. 690-691)

The second theme I wanted to look at more closely was the way in which men and

women flirt and whether there was any difference in their choices. It appears that across the

genders there is an urge to take more care in their appearance when attempting to court an

individual. The man who took my survey noted his attention to his appearance when flirting, one

of the non-binary participants did as well – but the true pattern emerges when looking at the

women who took the survey. Eight of the twelve women, which is two-thirds, reported a greater

attention to their appearance when expressing their interest in someone. Of those eight women,

only three of them stated that they could tell when a man was interested in them because he too

payed more attention to his appearance. This could possibly be attributed to the greater pressure

placed upon women’s appearance over that of men – they still suffer from unreachable standards

but not to the extent of women and girls. From a biological perspective this is entirely

backwards, for many species of animals, the males have much brighter colors and patterns in

order to attract their mate.

Evolutionary psychologists suggest that physical differences may influence the roles each

sex has in the mate selection process (see Buss 1989; Weisfeld and Woodard 2004). Most

notably, women devote many years to their offspring and thus must be more selective.

Men, on the other hand, are said to benefit evolutionarily more from frequent procreation.

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 Thus, women end up with more control in the early stages of flirting because they

evolutionarily need to be more choosy. (Levesque, 2011)

It is an interesting pattern to see with my survey because it is a total shift from the

biological perspective of how males and females are “supposed” to flirt. This suggests that our

courtship rituals are no longer strictly rooted from biology but rather has been shaped by our

society and the way we have been socialized to interact.

My third and final theme is how reliable our intuition is, in regards to other’s feelings

towards us. In order to gauge this I included the question, “have you ever misunderstood a

verbal/nonverbal cur from someone? (believed that they liked or did not like you in a romantic

context)”. Surprisingly my data did not shift from the last theme: the male stated that he has been

mistaken, one of the two non-binary participants did as well, and eight out of twelve women

stated that they have been mistaken regarding someone’s feelings towards them. Almost

everyone who chose the ‘yes’ option explained that they thought someone liked them because of

how close the other person was, but that it was an incorrect assumption. No one stated that they

were taken by surprise when finding out someone had feelings for them, only that they were

wrong to think they did. Again, my survey is not comprehensive enough to make such

generalizations, but I have a feeling that the ability to accurately determine someone’s feelings

towards you is more of a personal skill rather than one that is shaped by our biological sex or

gendered socialization. A study done by Watkins & Hall (2014) supports this with their own

findings:

The lack of difference between males and females in flirting detection accuracy supports

similar findings (Place et al., 2009; Shotland & Craig, 1988). Whether evaluating a male

target or a female target, observers can distinguish between friendly and sexually

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 interested conditions (Shotland & Craig, 1988) and seductive and friendly conditions

(Sigal, Gibbs, Adams, & Derfer, 1988). By contrast, Farris et al. (2008) suggested that

greater flirting detection accuracy by women is due to greater nonverbal sensitivity but

did not offer direct evidence for this explanation. The present investigation suggests that

such conclusions may be premature, and more study is needed. When women show

greater accuracy when detecting flirting and romantic interest, nonverbal sensitivity

should not be assumed to be the reason. (Watkins & Hall, 2014, p. 348-356)

What I found particularly interesting was that as with most species, we need to mate in

order to reproduce – but evolution has not given us the ability to consistently tell who is attracted

to us. We have a general sense of what it looks like when someone is romantically or sexually

interested in us but there is no foolproof way for us to know without asking. In a separate

journal, the authors point out a very interesting gap in research that should be explored further:

No study to date has explored whether participants in an interaction are more accurate

judges than outside observers. It is possible that the conversational and self-presentational

demands of the interaction hinder participants’ ability to make accurate judgments.

Alternatively, being involved in the interaction may provide individuals unique and more

precise insight into conversational partners’ feelings and thoughts. (Hall, Xing, &

Brooks, 2014, p. 939-958)

In conclusion, how we as humans engage in courtship and the display of romantic and/or

sexual interest in someone is a topic that needs more coverage in the research community. As I

stated in the beginning of this paper, our communication is a key aspect of how we function as a

society – all animals have the ability to communicate but we are special because of our use of

language and the capacity to study our own communication patterns. It is important to study

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these patterns so we can better our understanding of how our socialization, gendered or not, had

shaped our behaviors. By looking closely at these behaviors and taking into consideration the

genders of those involved, we get a glimpse at how our learned expectations tie into traditional

gender roles and beliefs. This is in itself quite important as we move forward as a society, by

seeing what stemmed from past roles and beliefs, we are able to actively work against this

socialization.

Again, my survey does not provide the most varied population, but few of my themes

seemed to produce incredibly gendered responses. Of the fifteen participants who took my

survey, eight of them considered themselves to be dominant when engaging in courtship – seven

of them were women. This is at odds with traditional ideals of how men and women engage in

romance with each other, while the one man also reported being dominant, seven of the twelve

women did as well. My second theme was even more split, ten of the fifteen participants self-

reported that they paid more attention to their appearance when flirting with someone. It was the

exact same for my last theme, the ability to accurately tell when another person is romantically

and/or sexually attracted to you. With both themes, eight women, one man, and one non-binary

participant reported that they paid more notice to their appearance and have been mistaken about

someone’s feelings for them. This leads me to assume, at least for those who participated in my

survey, that flirting is not overly gendered and is more of a case by case basis.

Flirting is an area of life that requires some tweaking, behaviors such as girl watching are

rarely seen as being threatening – from the male’s point of view. It is in fact a form of sexual

harassment but is rarely discussed and many men either ignore or are unaware of how hostile it

makes the environment for the woman being watched. All too often, a man’s fragile masculinity

is shown precedence over a woman’s feeling of safety and comfort. By looking at these

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behavioral patterns we can raise awareness of the harm these actions create and aim to better

educate those who are learning about sexual harassment. During her research, Quinn asked the

men she had been interviewing about girl watching to imagine themselves as the woman –

surprisingly, even the men who previously saw nothing wrong with it were all of a sudden

shocked. Many of them admitted that they too would feel uncomfortable and even unsafe in the

same situation with the roles reversed. I bring this up again as I feel it could be an important

educational tool when reworking sexual harassment seminars and/or trainings. By forcing the

men to put themselves in our shoes, it is very hard for them to simply write their behavior off as

being playful or simply as a bonding experience between men. The trend of toxic masculinity

and dis-empathy has allowed men to ignore their own problematic behavior, many believing that

women consider too many actions as being sexual harassment. Which leads me to my final point,

if you are worried that how you flirt may be misconstrued as harassment – maybe you’re not

flirting and are in fact being harassing towards the apple of your eye.

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 Works Cited

David, D. H. (2004). Flirting with meaning: An examination of miscommunication in flirting

interactions. Sex Roles, 50(7), 481-489. Retrieved from

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/docview/225372696?accountid=108

Frisby, B. N., Dillow, M. R., Gaughan, S., & Nordlund, J. (2011). Flirtatious communication: An

experimental examination of perceptions of social-sexual communication motivated by

evolutionary forces. Sex Roles, 64(9-10), 682-694. doi: 10.1007/s11199-010-9864-5

Hall, J. A., Xing, C., Brooks, S. (2014) Accurately Detecting Flirting: Error Management

Theory, the Traditional Sexual Script, and Flirting Base Rate. Communication Research,

42(7), 939-956. doi: 10.1177%2F0093650214534972

Levesque, R. J. R., (2011) Flirting. Encyclopedia of Adolescence, 1048-1050. doi: 10.1007/978-

1-4419-1695-2_740

Quinn, B. A. (2002). Sexual Harassment and Masculinity. Gender & Society, 16(3), 386-402.

doi:10.1177/0891243202016003007

Watkins, J. L., Hall, J. A. (2014) The Association Between Nonverbal Sensitivity and Flirting

Detection Accuracy. Communication Research Reports, 31(4), 348-356.

doi: 10.1080/08824096.2014.963220

Whitty, M. T. (2004). Cyber-Flirting: An Examination of Mens and Womens Flirting Behaviour

Both Offline and on the Internet. Behaviour Change, 21(02), 115-126.

doi:10.1375/bech.21.2.115.55423

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