Men who think they are attractive are more likely to infer sexual interest from women. Findings suggested that men’s self-perceptions and women’s appearance may bias men’s sexual judgment

>A study of heterosexual men found that they perceive stronger sexual intent in women’s behavior when they (participating men) feel stronger sexual arousal. They tended to report greater sexual arousal when shown a picture of an attractive woman than when the woman was unattractive. The paper was published in [Behavioral Sciences](https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15081101).

>Men sometimes infer sexual interest from women’s behavior even when no sexual intention is present. This is called sexual overperception. On the other hand, women tend to underperceive men’s interest in long-term commitments. In part, these situations occur because both men and women tend to rely on ambiguous social cues to infer the other party’s intentions. However, costs associated with making a mistake in judging sexual intent differ by gender.

>Error management theory suggests that gender differences in perceptions appear because men and women strongly guard against costly mating mistakes. For men, this usually means making sure that an opportunity for sex is not missed. For women, this means avoiding a situation where they would have a child with a man who will not invest resources in her or her offspring.

Doubt this is men specific.

>these situations occur because both men and women tend to rely on ambiguous social cues to infer the other party’s intentions.

Clearly we need to work on a non-ambiguous system. Some sort of LED traffic light set-up maybe? 

I must think I’m hideous…

This has GOT to be relative to the mean, because the average guy is clueless when a woman is hitting on him.  

A guy who walks up to a woman and gets flirted with knows he’s attractive verse a guy who doesn’t. Over time. Most people figure out who and where they are somewhat accurately.

I look “nice” and after an hour of conversation, I’m attractive enough to get a date. So I know what I am. I’m not walk up to a woman at the bar with immediate chance to take her home. All got to know our niches.

Isn’t this just a variation of the Fundamental Attribution Error?

“ For men, wasting mating attempts on women who are unlikely to acquiesce to their solicitations results in emotionally painful as well as socially costly rejection, in addition to possibly wasted economic resources (Buss & Shackelford, 2008). Therefore, despite most men being attracted to very attractive women, it is more reproductively efficient to focus their mating efforts on women who are more likely to reciprocate (i.e., women similar in sexual desirability to themselves). The current study tested whether men would increase their self-ratings of one dimension of sexual desirability, physical attractiveness, to increase their potential mating pool.
In summary, people tend to perceive the beliefs and behaviors of others as consistent with their own goals (Maner et al., 2005), including goals to engage in sexual behavior (Bhatia & Loewenstein, 2022; Loewenstein, 1996). Sexually aroused men interpreting an attractive woman’s behavior might report inflated self-perceived attractiveness to “match” that of the woman (Taylor et al., 2011) to cognitively justify sexual pursuit of more attractive women.”

As I understand it, when confronted with a more attractive woman, the man inflates his own perception of self-attractiveness in order to consider himself eligible for this potential mate.

Here I am thinking their bright neon sign saying “I am interested” is actually me overthinking things. Wish it was normalized for people to just be direct about it

Another unnecessarily gendered study brought to you by the Masters of Wasting Money

Soooooo many men are super delusional… the number of times men have thought I was attracted or interested in them, or just flatly doesn’t care when you say no… men need to evolve.

Fake it until you make it!

Nevermind with the hypothesis or conclusion.

** This study is junk! **

They showed men pictures of a woman then told them to *image* her doing things dungeons and dragons style “imagine she touches your arm” or “imagine she gives your her number” at no point were the men actually perceiving the behaviour of a real woman relative to them.

I could say “imagine a woman smiling” what does that mean? In real life one could show silliness, one smile could be a tight smile masking discomfort, or a sad smile showing grief.

They men were just told to imagine… a man who calls himself attractive is likely to have more experiences of women “touching him on the arm” in a suggestive way so thats what he will recall.

A better test would be to have people mingle in a party and have the women write down who they thought were attractive and have the men write down how attractive they are and which which women they thought were into them. Perhaps write down before how attractive they think they are before so the party experience doesn’t taint their answer.

See which men over perceive. Who was most likely to predict correctly or incorrectly.

But dating dungeons and dragons? No thats not proving the hypothesis.

It never ceases to amaze how often when you click on a social science “study” the methodology has nothing to do with the hypothesis or conclusion.

Ah, that’s why I never assume that a woman is flirting with me, even she obviously is and I realise it 5 years later thinking back on a conversation.

So you’re telling me that dudes that think they’re hot are more likely to think women will also think they’re hot? Academia is off the damn rails.

It took me awhile to figure out im ugly. Is this what this very confusing title is trying to say?