Some people seem to be naturally gifted flirters, while many say it’s a skill that holds them back. What sets the good and bad flirters apart and can you learn to be better at it?
In a crowded bar on a busy Friday night, one customer sits alone, waiting for their friend. The bartender, noticing the lonely patron, starts making small talk, asking about their day and making them feel welcome. Soon, the pair are hitting it off, the minutes fly by and the friend’s tardy timekeeping is forgotten.
The bartender is charming, and the flirtatious conversation from this chance encounter puts the customer at ease. The customer is enjoying the attention – and why not?
“When someone flirts with you, you feel valued, and your perception of your desirability increases,” says Gurit Birnbaum, a professor of psychology at Reichman University in Israel. In other words, being flirted with feels good. But can it also be good for you?
In the bar scenario, our bartender is unaware that the customer is in a relationship already. (Birnbaum points out that even if someone is in a relationship, flirting with others is to be expected. “With time, people tend to fantasise about other people. That’s normal – it means nothing.
Yet there is something stranger about this blossoming interaction at a bar. While it might be the sort of interaction that could be taking place right now somewhere in the world, on this occasion, the bartender is computer generated and the whole interaction is taking place in virtual reality. It is occurring in a world dreamed up by Birnbaum.
Reflecting on the idea that people start to fantasise about others when in long term relationships, Birnbaum wondered whether fantasies could be used to help us regulate our more destructive desires. Would flirting with a virtual bartender make someone in a committed relationship more or less likely to flirt with someone in real life, she wondered?
“I thought that this secure space [virtual reality] may help people control their desires, and help them maintain their current relationships,” she says. “I can think about whatever I want, and then I’m done with it. And I don’t have to act on those fantasies.”
The virtual bartender looks a little uncanny – their movements are stiff and face a bit spooky. (“Virtual reality is much more immersive than what you can see in the video – so don’t be disappointed,” warns Birnbaum when sending me a screen recording.) They certainly couldn’t be mistaken for a real person. But the speech is realistic, and in a five-minute interaction the conversation flows quite authentically.
After removing their headsets, people taking part in Birnbaum’s experiment were then presented either with a conventionally attractive interviewer or an attractive stranger, who was actually a researcher posing as someone in need of help. The subjects who had flirted with the virtual bartender said they found the interviewer less attractive and spent less time helping the stranger than those who had a non-flirtatious conversation. It’s as though, says Birnbaum, flirting at the virtual bar had inoculated them against a real-life temptation. Subjects also said they desired their real partner more after the flirtatious interaction at the bar.
Flirting with strangers while in a relationship could strengthen the bond between partners, suggests Birnbaum, but warns that this could be a slippery slope. Having a strong understanding of your own and your partner’s flirting boundaries is essential, she says. The factors that might tip someone from harmless flirting into cheating can be subtle. “When people are exposed to norms of infidelity, for example if you know that your peers cheat on their partners, you are more likely to do so yourself,” she says. This is called “contagious infidelity“.
Birnbaum adds that there is a “constellation of personality traits” that make some people more resilient or more prone to infidelity. For example, more narcissistic people or people with attachment insecurities, are more likely to cheat than others. “We have to take into account so many factors in order to predict which seductive experiences would lead to infidelity,” says Birnbaum.
Other covert examples of flirting are “tie signs”, which can be anything from initiating eye contact, hugging, giggling at jokes, to something that’s more germ-related, like sharing food – which we don’t typically do with a stranger.
In a non-flirting context, taking a partner’s last name in marriage or wearing a wedding ring would be symbols of being tied to someone else. “Tie signs are often performed in a partner’s absence to signal that you’re taken,” says Fisher. They can also be used to signal that someone else is not available. “If you want to signal that your partner is taken, the easiest way to do that is to perform an action. It is easier to put an arm around them than to tell someone else to back off,” says Fisher.
But if flirtatious tie-signs are rebuffed, or if they’re not very warmly received, these are signals that will tell potential mate poachers about the level of commitment in their romantic interest’s existing relationship, and whether or not they have a chance.
And of course, not demonstrating exclusive interest is among the most off-putting flirting behaviours, perhaps because we like to have the undivided attention of our dates.
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