DadTalk

The secret to sexual success for men? Misreading whether women are interested.

Lotharios who 'misread the signals' from women and assume they are more attractive than they are - and there are lots - should just be in for repeated embarasssments, you might think. 

But researchers now think that men who misjudge what women think of them are actually at an advantage in the mating game - as long as they keep trying.

Men might actually have evolved the trait - men who misjudge whether women are interested, then 'bounce back' to ask other women, tend to eventually succeed, then go on to have more offspring.

Over time, this may have led men evolving to become more thick-skinned - and to misjudge their chances even worse.

‘There are tons of studies showing that men think women are interested when they're not,’ says Williams College psychologist Carin Perilloux, who conducted 'speed-dating' research with 200 undergraduates, along with with Judith A. Easton and David M. Buss of University of Texas at Austin. ‘Ours is the first to systematically examine individual differences.’

The study found that men, especially less attractive specimens, did tend to overestimate their own attractiveness, particularly when confronted with an attractive woman.

But - at least when it comes to casual sex, rather than long-term mating - that might be essential for success for men who aren't perfect mate material.

Men actually need to be overconfident to succeed - especially if they're not models of alpha-male perfection themselves.

‘They are limited mainly by the number of consenting sex partners—so overestimation is even more important,' says Periloux.

The research involved 96 male 103 female undergraduates, who were put through a ‘speed-meeting’ exercise—talking for three minutes to each of five potential opposite-sex mates.

Before the conversations, the participants rated themselves on their own attractiveness - and were assessed for the level of their desire for a short-term sexual encounter.

After each ‘meeting,’ they rated the partner on a number of measures, including physical attractiveness and their likely sexual interest in the participant.

The results: Men looking for a quick hookup were more likely to overestimate the women's desire for them.

Men who thought they were hot also thought the women were hot for them—but men who were actually attractive, by the women's ratings, did not make this mistake.

The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest. And women tended to underestimate men's desire.

Evolutionarily speaking, this isn't just a recipe for repeated embarassment, say the psychologists. Over millennia, these errors may in fact have enhanced men's reproductive success.

Read more at the Mail Online.