You are at a party with friends, one of whom has only lately been hanging out with your usual social group, and it dawns on you that you are quite attracted to that person and think there could be something romantic in the air. You notice that they keep glancing over at you, holding your gaze, and you can sense a little sizzle of some potentially powerful chemistry. Sometimes it even seems a bit hot between you. And yet, the next moment, you feel like they are ignoring you as they look away, focus their attention elsewhere and give you the cold shoulder, dismissing you and keeping you at a platonic arm’s length. You can’t quite figure out what is going on. It feels as if they are flirting with you one minute, and that the next minute they’re not. You are getting confused, feeling a little vulnerable, but are still quite optimistic. Aha! you think. They think they’re a total catch. And they are! They must be playing hard-to-get.
BEFORE YOU PLOW ON with this person and invest more time into what you hope could be a night to remember, or even a great long-term relationship, you need to check out whether they are blowing more hot than cold.
What are the key signals here that may have made you assume they are playing hard-to-get? Another flirt signal: They look at you and then look away.
They may be giving you a flirt signal, but this same set of movements could just as easily be a dismissal signal. So what is the power being displayed or responded to here? Now is the time to start the SCAN process: suspend judgment and explore whether your assumption of “hard-to-get” is likely to be correct, or perhaps a lie you may be telling yourself.
Now be more descriptive of the key flirt signal you are picking up on, the relationship to power it demonstrates and the value it creates for both parties. The flirt signal in this case is a targeting look at you, followed by a clear head turn away, showing interest toward you and then interest seemingly elsewhere, or perhaps toying with that initial interest. Again in this scenario, the targeting is clear and powerful. The person shooting you the look is communicating that they have targeted you and see you as potentially valuable. Both parties in this case initially win the power play as both gain power.
However, the flip side of this—the head turn—feels dismissive, like they are taking your power away. Signals that can stimulate feelings of flirtation and attraction have some of the exact same elements as signals that can stimulate feelings of indifference or being rejected. The simultaneous approach/avoid power of these signals creates an opposing attraction/repulsion force that can be best described as allotropic—two different forms of the same property existing within the same physical environment. To you, it feels as if the person is blowing hot and cold; they are open and closed.
When they retract the targeting signal and turn their head away, the power play could be any of the following:
Now let’s take into account any other exposures you may also observe: Any hair displays? Are they touching their neck? If so, they may be exposing their armpit and also showing off their wrist. These displays allow pheromones to escape, signaling anything from dominance to availability. Exposing vulnerable points on the body may be a sign of submission. Women and men will often do this subconsciously with people they want to attract. Are you noticing any kind of belly display? This exposes the center of gravity and delicate organs around the stomach area, which again could display vulnerability or dominance.
The Power of Rejection
Psychologists from across the United States have demonstrated that rejection and physical pain are similar not only in that they are both distressing but also in how we feel them. These psychologists asked people to compare the pain of rejection to physical pain they have experienced, and often people rate their emotional pain as equal in severity to that associated with natural childbirth or even chemotherapy.1 In both cases a doctor might easily administer opiate-based pain relief. How often have we self-medicated to get over rejection when left to our own devices? When asked to rank rejection alongside other emotionally painful experiences, such as disappointment, frustration or fear, those all paled in comparison to the pain experienced from rejection. No wonder we attach a high risk to those power plays that may end with us getting rejected. Having your heart torn out is not so much a metaphor as a literal experience of the pain.
But why is this? Humans are social animals. Being rejected by our social group in our pre-civilized past and even now can mean losing access to food, protection and mating partners, making it extremely difficult to survive. In our pre-civilized past, being ostracized would have been akin to receiving a death sentence. Because the consequences of ostracism were so extreme, our brains developed an early warning system to alert us when we were at risk by triggering sharp pain whenever we experienced even a hint of social rejection.
Brain scans show that the very same brain regions get activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain. Some psychologists believe it is this power of rejection that can lead some to a dependence on opiate drugs, to manage the pain of their feelings of rejection from, or abandonment by, their social group.
SCAN some more and take into account the context: How seemingly comfortable is this new friend in this party environment? Do they know people, are they relaxed, is the atmosphere apparently fun? How do they appear—smiling and having a great time?
What about the social context? How do you fit into this group? Are you powerful and valuable in your social circle? If you are powerful and a leader in this social context, everyone may just be looking at you more, as people tend to do—to look more toward the leader for cues as to how to behave—and the person in question is simply falling into the same pattern.
Additionally, what can you deduce about their flirty behavior in the context of their general or normal body language? Let’s find a baseline.
Baselining, a commonly used technique in deception detection, is simply collecting useful details about how a person normally reacts under normal conditions to fairly normal stuff—that is, the way a person behaves without any special or extraordinary reason to act otherwise. Detectives and body language experts alike are often tasked with watching others’ body language to determine whether someone is lying, or perhaps if they’re attracted to us or to others. However, not everyone behaves the same way under those circumstances. By establishing a baseline in someone’s behavior, or determining their “regular” pattern of behavior, you can then observe when and how that behavior changes.
To quickly establish a baseline in this situation, look to see if this person is engaging in the same flirty behavior with others at the party, or perhaps with everyone at the party. If a person values you, then they may look at you more often than they do the others in the group, but if they are doing this with everybody, then this is their baseline, perhaps because they compulsively behave this way, or you are potentially one of many options for them that night. Determine what percentage of the other’s gaze you are getting, to determine if you have any leading edge. The person who likes you will have more eye contact with you than with those around you.
If their behavior stands out as being just for you, SCAN further and ask what else is going on. Let’s look at some behavioral and psychological theories in this area.
Ample studies and experiments show that, in certain circumstances, there can be an advantage to playing hard-to-get when trying to attract a mate;2 and certainly, the Internet is rich with articles and how-to guides on successfully playing the hard-to-get game, both in person and via text. So hard-to-get fits with scholarly as well as popular and romantic narratives about the different stages of mating—the fun of the chase, and part of the excitement.
Part of the benefit attributed to this game is that it fits in with a mind-set that the person playing hard-to-get shows their power of choice. They are playing with their ability, or power, to choose you or someone else. This fits in with social exchange theory, which offers a perspective (in this case) that how we choose mates depends on a combination of factors, including youth, beauty, social rank, kindness, creativity, humor and financial status, in order to create a combined index when weighing up suitability at first glance. So while they are potentially weighing up how desirable you are to them, at the same time their game of hard-to-get increases their value for you as a potential mate, as they are showing off their power at that moment in the social context.
We can also factor in persona theory, Carl Jung’s idea that our mates become a barrier or a mask between us and the rest of the world, and this factors heavily into how we select a mate, which in turn is based on how much the mate enhances our self-esteem and self-image.
So at the end of the SCAN, your new judgment is that at this moment anything is possible, and you cannot know for sure that they are playing hard-to-get. They could be considering getting together with you, or maybe considering something or someone else. Certainly they have gotten your attention and they know it, as they are not indicating any fear of rejection in directing their focus away from you periodically. Maybe they are doing their own testing to see if you are searching for their attention even when they are focusing elsewhere, to weigh how much power they may hold over you. Their behavior, though seemingly ambiguous, has the potential of increasing desire on both sides.
Now to get feedback with a test that might help you know what they are thinking: Our instinct when someone we are interested in plays hard-to-get with us may not always be to give up and find someone else who is throwing themselves at us. You can safely test your power and value within this flirtation exchange and how much power you can safely exercise in moving this flirtation to the next level.
To immediately move in before weighing up all the signals is risky, as it may well end in rejection, which as we’ve seen may be pretty much the end of it for you. But if the person shooting the look did indeed open up that vulnerable neck area, they are essentially signaling to you that your risk of rejection is low. And don’t forget, looking away and exposing the vulnerability of the neck releases pheromones, chemicals that can communicate information about genetic compatibility, sexual orientation, gender and sexual readiness by affecting us unconsciously and physically. Pheromones can be a powerful contributor to why we eventually choose the mates we choose.
One way to tell if this person is interested in you is to maintain a slightly prolonged period of eye contact with them and see what happens to their pupils. The pupils of a person who values you may dilate in your presence. According to tests, pupils generally dilate when we look at anything we like, are stimulated by, or are aroused by and attracted to; furthermore, our brains are hardwired to recognize this dilation when we see it in the pupils of others and to be attracted to it.
BODY LANGUAGE MYTHBUSTER
It’s Rude to Stare!
It can be quite aggressive to stare, but sometimes it can in fact be quite the opposite. Indeed, holding a prolonged gaze can actually lead to attraction. When you look at someone’s eyes for longer periods of time, hormones that are responsible for liking get released in your body, so long as the other behavior around this is positive.3
So, assuming they have repeated the targeting gaze at you, followed by looking away, the next time they make eye contact with you, look more deeply into their eyes. Be observant: Are their pupils large? If their pupils are dilated, your risk of rejection in moving forward to your next steps is greatly diminished.
Cheap Signals
Have you ever received a powerful nonverbal message from someone who risked very little by sending that signal? We call that a cheap signal. Species other than humans also exhibit cheap signals. Quite often these signals lead to catastrophic effects for both the sender and receiver.
For example, a bee signals to its hive that there is food nearby. The bees respond to the location and find no food. The hive, after wasting considerable resources on a false alarm, will most likely kill the bee that sent the cheap signal; because it took so little effort for one bee to send many on a fruitless task, it is best to eliminate that bee for the sake of the hive. We should be wary of powerful signals that may have a similar impact on us. Especially when we suspect there is low risk and little cost for the person sending the signal.
In advertising, it is the perpetual “Liquidation Sale!” sign the expensive furniture shop uses to lure you in even though, mysteriously, the store never closes. It is the Internet clickbait that promises an incredible story yet delivers just an ad for some strange, fat-busting fruit. Equally, it is the politician who promises a change during election debates and U-turns once they take office.
Cheap signals are easy both to send and to engage with, particularly online, and can lead us down the garden path. Just think how simple it is in virtual environments to send flirty messages, responses and emoticons when you are not face to face with your audience. Do you find that potential suitors flirt with you more online than in person? Online there is sometimes close to zero social risk, as almost no one is watching. The nonverbal signals used either online or live remain the same, but online those signals are not under live examination by the sender’s social group, with all the opportunities for immediate scrutiny and feedback that this context offers: low risk = low cost. If you think you are on the receiving end of a cheap signal, you may indeed be the target for another’s practice run at flirting, which can leave you feeling you’ve been carelessly toyed with. And of course we need to watch out for those cheap signals that are potentially bad for us—signals intentionally meant to con us.
QUICK SCAN
S: By suspending judgment on your initial instinctual reaction to the two different meanings within the same physical movement (target look and then look away), you can briefly counter the powerful effect of these conflicting approach/avoid signals.
C: Then, taking in the context of their baseline of behavior within the larger social context, you can more accurately reevaluate the signals. You are being more conscious of how context affects your evaluation of behavior.
A: When you ask what else can be brought into your thinking from the worlds of psychology and behavior, you are able to explore the meaning and possible benefits of playing hard-to-get, and so open yourself up to testing your ideas against other models. This again briefly takes you into a more conscious state of mind.
N: Your new judgment expands your initial assumption of hard-to-get to include other possibilities and illuminates for you that others are likely judging you and testing their assumptions as much as you are testing yours.