Ed Dodson responding..
Francois-Rene Rideau wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 07:59:35AM -0700, Chris Rasch wrote:
> > I think that one purpose flirting serves is to separate the verbally fluent,
> > socially adept males from their clumsier brethren. Verbally fluent,
> > socially adept males are
On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 07:59:35AM -0700, Chris Rasch wrote:
> I think that one purpose flirting serves is to separate the verbally fluent,
> socially adept males from their clumsier brethren. Verbally fluent,
> socially adept males are more likely to succeed at [...]
Yes, but this skill is only
David Friedman wrote:
>Consider a female looking for a mate. ... she doesn't know who the best
>male is until she knows what her options are, ... So one might expect a
>complicated process of each side signalling a possible interest, everyone
>revising estimates, another clearer set of signals,
I agree with Bill that people flirt because it's "fun"--but I agree with Robin, that
the reason that people find flirting "fun" is because it is an aid to finding high
quality mates.
>From what I've read, for the most part, women drive the courship process (1). Both
>male and females seek the
Ed Dodson responding...
William Dickens wrote:
> I also think there are sex differences on this one. I suspect more women than men
>enjoy flirting and that more men than women view it as purely instrumental. I'm
>certainly willing to buy evolutionary explanations for that. -- Bill Dickens
>
E
od as practicing for adult roles.
I'll grant that flirting can have instrumental value as practice even if you aren't
currently in the market for a mate, but the question was "Why are courting signals
ambiguous?" My response was (in part) aesthetics. Now if you want to propose an
e
Speaking of evolutionary psychology ... .
Consider a female looking for a mate. She wants the best male who
will agree to be her mate. Males similarly want the best female. But
she doesn't know who the best male is until she knows what her
options are, and a male doesn't know if he is an opti
William T. Dickens wrote:
>So far everyone's response ... has assumed that flirting is entirely
>instrumental. ... there is another explanation as well ... I see a lot of
>people flirting who have absolutely no intention of mating. ... they are
>just playing a game. Why would they do this if it
So far everyone's response to Robin's very interesting question has assumed that
flirting is entirely instrumental. Although I have no doubt that nearly every
explanation for subtlety and ambiguity that has been proposed is correct to some
degree I think there is another explanation as well and
The explanation below assumes that all women know what they're looking
for whereas no men know what women are looking for. Which isn't plaus...
h, wait, forget that remark.
I think we could differentiate between flirting as a way of garnering
information v flirting as a way of mitigating,
Robsin Hanson wrote:
People are usually not very direct when flirting, courting, etc.
For example, people usually do not just say "Do you want to have sex?".
One reason could be that some groups of individuals, by virtue of their
natural (or artificial!) physical or other attributes, and by vir
Variants of your option 1: People want to be able to find out if the
other party is interested without committing themselves, for two
reasons:
a. The status of "rejected suitor" is different from, and to some
degree incompatible with, the status of friend--and they want to
preserve the latter
Robin Hanson's post was very interesting. I have wondered that ambiguous
signals might play another role.
Suppose all women like men who wear red ties because those men, for some
reason, are nicer or richer than others. Assume that this is the only way
women can tell the nice guys from the je
People are usually not very direct when flirting, courting, etc.
For example, people usually do not just say "Do you want to have sex?".
Instead flirting and courting tend to be extremely complex processes
involving much ambiguity, subtle error-prone interpretation, and
complex analysis.
It is in
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