Why do pretty girls look away when flirting?
Because they’re not into you? Ha, no, I don’t mean when they turn their head or whole body away. I mean when their body and head remain facing you but they move their eyes away, usually up and away but sometimes straight to the side. Imagine them giggling and saying “Wellll…..” — that look. (For those who need reminding: one example, another, and another, plus the Penelope Cruz picture in the link just below.)
To continue on a previous post that discussed a hypothesis for why humans have white eyes — to help others detect what we’re looking at, and thus thinking about? — I suggest that this reflex of girls is an amplifier of an underlying index of phenotypic quality, namely large clear eyes.
The biologist Oren Hasson (free PDFs) has proposed a distinction between two types of animal signals: “indices” are honest indicators of underlying quality, while “amplifiers” make the index easier to perceive for the recipient. As an example, if others care about your ectoparasite load, then having plumage whose color was complementary to that of the bug would amplify your signal: even from a distance, it would be obvious who was clean and who was crawling with bugs. Your spot-free or diseased plumage is the index, while its bug-contrasting color is the amplifier.
(Say, that sounds like another reason why humans evolved lighter skin when they left Africa and adopted agriculture, which introduced a huge disease burden, especially diseases that produce and/or leave behind unpleasant, visible cues. It would be easier to spot who had “good genes” here if they had light skin. This cause is likely minor, but there could be something to it.)
In the case of girly girls, their large clear eyes are the index (this is something we pay attention to when judging the attractiveness of female faces), while the looking-away reflex is the amplifier. People with larger eyes show more white than do those with beady eyes. By looking away, nearly all of the visible eye is white, making it easier for onlookers to judge eye size. It is simply easier for us to judge the area of a solid figure (the nearly all-white eye) than the sum of the areas of scraps and bits (the white parts on either side of the iris when a person is looking straight at you).
And as always, this doesn’t have to be the only reason that the behavior has evolved. One alternative is that it serves to playfully tease the male by denying him eye-contact. I find that unsatisfying (the hypothesis, not teasing), since there are many ways to break eye-contact, and the most common way to do so while flirting just happens to make it easier to see what large, dreamy eyes a person has.
Labels: babes and hunks, signalling
It would be easier to spot who had ‘good genes’ here if they had light skin
This general line of reasoning, namely, that a trait would be selected for because it made it easier for potential mates to assess your fitness accurately, has never made sense to me. But I recognize that it’s complicated. Is there a general consensus on this type of thing? It’s fairly trivial to show that the ability to deliberately misrepresent your fitness as a mate can be advantageous, which is why the notion that the opposite characteristic could be selected for seems doubtful-bordering-on-fallacious to me. I mean, you can come up with a line of reasoning where the opposite sex finds the ‘honest’ trait more appealing and then sexual selection takes place, but this seems like bootstrapping.
maybe it’s because looking away indicates nervousness, and portraying nervousness (intentionally or unintentionally) tells the other person that you might be nervous because you like them.
I have seen females moving their eyes away looking down, when a male fixates at them flirtasiously in a social setting. The look gave a clear signal that the female didn’t share the male’s feelings and was uncomfortable (quite different than the look in the pictures).
It’s fairly trivial to show that the ability to deliberately misrepresent your fitness as a mate can be advantageous, which is why the notion that the opposite characteristic could be selected for seems doubtful-bordering-on-fallacious to me.
I blogged about this a while back. An evolutionary advantage to those with a selective advantage is worth more than an equal-strength disadvantage to those with a selective disadvantage.
of course, turkeys don’t have these problems….
bbartlog — read through some of the PDFs on Oren Hasson’s website (also click the link on the left, “Hasson’s publications”). They cover these questions.
Basically, if the index is being selected for (genes that protect against bugs), the amplifier will be selected for as well (it enhances the phenotype, and typically costs nothing — unlike a handicap). The animal can’t fake their index, by definition they’re honest — they have “good genes” for immunity, or they have genes that make them big, and bigness allows them to roar loudly (which a smaller animal might not be capable of doing).
If you can get it, Maynard Smith and Harper’s Animal Signals reviews most of these issues about honest signals, as well as other stuff, but unfortunately doesn’t talk about amplifiers per se. It’s not a textbook or monograph, just a 150-page lit review, but as always with Maynard Smith, written very clearly.
I don’t think the look-away reflex shows nervousness. When you get nervous, do you stare straight ahead, move your eyes away for a second, then look ahead again? Sometimes you make this eye movement when you’re pensive, trying to solve a problem, etc., but you usually look away for more than just a second.
If they had shifty eyes, that might show nervousness, though.
Another idea — this may also be why girls close their eyes to flirt. That’s much rarer, since you look strange when you close your eyes for more than an instant. Y’know, sort of slowly closing them, leaving them shut for a moment, then slowly re-opening them.
If you look at the picture in the second link of the post, it shows this signal too. With the eyes closed, you can better judge the area of the visible eye — really the area of the upper eyelid, but that correlates almost perfectly with the area of the eye underneath. Again, it makes a solid figure, not scraps that you have to mentally piece together.
I don’t think the look-away reflex shows nervousness. When you get nervous, do you stare straight ahead, move your eyes away for a second, then look ahead again?
I think that’s because usually when you get nervous you’re not also simultaneously interested in the person that’s making you nervous.
OK, consider a related case: you see a grizzly bear 20 feet away, and it’s looking at you. You will get nervous, and you will be interested in what’s making you nervous (you want to pay it lots of attention). Your eyes may get shifty, but you will not look up and away for a second or two, then return to looking at the bear.
The same division of the nervous system is activated in both cases, namely the sympathetic nervous system (the fight / flight / fright / sex system). In both cases, your heart will beat faster, your hands will sweat, your pupils will dilate, etc. So, these do honestly signal nervousness.
But the look-away reflex is not part of this suite of responses, so I don’t think it signals nervousness.
Think of what is meant by the adjective “fetching”. Not the verb, the adjective.
As I continue talking to myself in the comments, note that all 4 of the pictures show the person looking to their right. Maybe there’s a laterality to this? I just skimmed an edited volume on facial expression, and one chapter reviews the lit on laterality of emotional expressions, and it doesn’t seem like this reflects left-vs.-right brain differences, in general.
Isnt it – eyes that look to right ( left to the observer) is a sign of lying or deceit?
As I continue talking to myself in the comments
i think you answered the question in the title. zing!
Frankly, I think it’s just a sign of non-aggression, but not submission (as lowering the eyes would be) – it says “come and get me”.
So you mentioned that human eyes might be white to help people figure out what we are thinking about. Then, a pretty girl looking away while flirting may be indicating she is thinking about doing something else, that is, going somewhere else to do more than talking. This can be so even if she is not explicitly thinking about it. It may just be a form of innuendo that we don’t have to think about. In this case, the looking away could indicate embarrassment. So, I guess we have a real secret idea or a learned form of innuendo and the real or feigned embarrassment that goes along with it.
i think you answered the question in the title
Heh, you know for certain that I’m not a blabbermouth in person. I don’t have to be — I can just sit there and look pretty.
did you just get hit on or something?
you might want to look at studies of flirting, cross-culturally. maybe it’s different. this would be a job for the much-maligned cultural anthropologists.
when flirting, do men look away to the right, too? i’ve never flirted with a man before – honest! — maybe the ladies could chime in?
did you just get hit on or something?
It happens pretty regularly. I only noticed this reflex after reading on the animal signaling lit.
you might want to look at studies of flirting, cross-culturally. maybe it’s different.
The work on facial expression of emotion, started by Darwin and fleshed out by Paul Ekman, shows that these reflexes are basically universal.
More substantially, the pictures I used in this post come from a variety of cultures. The first is northern Euro, Penelope Cruz is Spanish, and Sridevi is Indian.
when flirting, do men look away to the right, too?
My hypothesis is that the reflex is an amplifier of eye size, and guys aren’t usually judged on their eye size, more on height, wealth, dominance, etc. Pretty boys are the obvious exception, so I’m making sure to exaggerate this reflex as much as I can from now on.
There’s assortative mating for lip size — don’t know about eye size, but it’s possible. So if a guy has large eyes and is flirting with a large-eyed girl, then you might see the male doing this.
I’m wondering what type of experiments could sort out all the hypotheses people are throwing around here. A couple questions that might eliminate some faulty hypotheses here:
1) is it a cultural universal? can this action be found in any other primates?
2) do people with an epicanthal fold also open their eyes wider when they do this?
3) do blind girls do this?
4) do girls do this only when the male is in front of them, or is it also done in response to thinking about or seeing an attractive male?
5) do men (on average) find a lustful stare more enticing than this side to side eye movement?
If anyone knows any of these answers it’d probably clarify this.
Agnostic, one problem that just occured to me with your idea is that when women do this they close their eyes slightly (especially if they’re also smiling). If the main goal were to show the volume of the eye’s white surface that wouldn’t be what evolved, right?
Check it: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/91/271995545_8bb1eed3a1.jpg
NSFW by the way ^^
“The work on facial expression of emotion, started by Darwin and fleshed out by Paul Ekman, shows that these reflexes are basically universal.”
One detail in my mind from reading the literature on nonverbal communication is that expertise can reduce ambiguity but can not eliminate it. And a corollary about biases not making one immune to their effects.
Most people are naturally deluded to interpret social signals such that (a) they are the subject, (b) positive affect in expressions, (c) receptive stance. There is clearly an adaptive benefit in self deception.
Recognizing subtle differences in expressions can save embarrassment in some cases, however they are often indeterminate relative to very different internal states, in addition to base error in conditions of performance