Courtship and Rejection Signals Researches – 1

It would be interesting, now, to understand which are the nonverbal signals that women use when they are looking for a potential partner and what characteristics, independently from personal preferences, they deem fundamental in a man, so much as to decree the success or failure of the interaction before having even exchanged a single word with him.

The answer to the first of these questions is given by a series of researches conducted by the department of behavioral sciences of an American university. We will deal particularly with three of these researches. The first two studies concern the survey of nonverbal signals used by women to attract potential partners, while the last one deals with the signals used for their rejection.

The researches consisted in the observation and cataloging of the type and the number of nonverbal signals used by a champion of women. The observations have been made either in places frequented by both men and women, such as single's bars, and in places frequented by women only.

Subjects were observed over a period of time by trained observers. They annotated every nonverbal behavior and the relative consequences, if the gesture made by the woman was followed by one of these behaviors: the man approached the woman, the man talked to the woman, the man leaned toward her or the man touched her.

At the end of these observations, more than 50 nonverbal behaviors have been cataloged.