
Sorry fellas, but she’s probably just being nice to you.
Many women know that men sometimes mistake friendliness—say, smiling and eye contact—for sexual interest. Psychological research has long backed up their experience. A new study appearing in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science is no exception. It found that college-age heterosexual men who viewed images of women misidentified their body language and facial expressions as sexually suggestive 12 percent of the time. Women made the same mistake only 8.7 percent of the time.
These findings are nothing new, but when the researchers ran the second part of the experiment a curious pattern emerged. It turns out the men weren't simply over-sexualizing their social environments, as is popularly thought, but they were interpreting facial expressions and body language wrong altogether.
If men are truly over-sexualizing, say the authors, then they would be extra-adept at reading a sexual innuendo as such. But what men in fact did was frequently undersexualize women in that context—they read an expression that was intended to be a come-on as simply a friendly gesture.
The results could be useful for sexual-assault prevention programs. The thinking is that men who are at a higher risk of sexually coercing women would benefit from training on how to discern nonverbal cues more accurately. Mistakes could lead to feelings of frustration and rejection—potentially dangerous feelings for this subset of men.

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Comments
I think its the women who are reading it wrong; they think that men mean sexual conotations only "8.7%" Sorry ladies but Eddie Murphy got it right; look it up I don't want to type it here.
0 out of 0 people found this comment helpfulfrom Ojai, California
So, men got it wrong 12% of the time and women "only" got it wrong 9% of the time? That's not a very big difference. I think that it shows both sides can be essentially equally wrong; that extra 3% is fairly negligible as far as I'm concerned, and hardly merits stinging criticism.
2 out of 2 people found this comment helpfulYes this concurs with popular belief that women go to dances for the sheer recreation of dancing were as men go for the "hunt".
0 out of 1 people found this comment helpfulIt is interesting to me that nobody has pointed out that it is also saying that women get it right 91% of the time and men 88% (it sounds less out of whack and people seem less clueless when you put it that way...)
Easier to see: roughly 9/10 accuracy for everyone on a nearly rounded average - (so whats the problem?)
1 out of 1 people found this comment helpful"So, men got it wrong 12% of the time and women "only" got it wrong 9% of the time? That's not a very big difference. I think that it shows both sides can be essentially equally wrong; that extra 3% is fairly negligible as far as I'm concerned, and hardly merits stinging criticism." - Solace
That difference can be quite significant once you run statistical analysis on the data, especially depending on how large the sampling was.
0 out of 0 people found this comment helpfulI think the biggest thing you guys are missing is that it isn't the difference that counts to them, it's the fact that a subset group of men can misinterpert these signs 12% of the time which can lead to sexual assaults caused by frustration or embarrasment. While women may get it wrong almost just as much, they hardly ever turn to violence because of it.
0 out of 0 people found this comment helpful-Chase
oh yeh, but men can control his feelings when he wants,but know that womens are more sensible than men,so the beauty is..why men got such thing in his mind when he look at women??..men will have something imagined in his mind that i will be good when she is like this..every men imagine their partner,she should be like this ..like that..it is common..females too..have same thing to get their partner..the real truth is why women dress like that??..why they make gestures like that..?..she wants men to look at them..they think they are hot.bla bla bla...only by this men got that feeling by looking at them..so it is right starting from womens not from mens..they wnt men to look at them..by looking her men got...itz is noting about percentage (12%) or (9%)...itz about the way they think..
0 out of 0 people found this comment helpful