Streetside: Chatting with KU’s Jeffrey Hall, the anti-pickup artist
It has been the observation of several women I’ve known that among my deficiencies as a mate is a stubborn aversion to expressing my feelings. I used to think this characteristic was native to my gender rather than a failing specifically mine. But at a certain point, you have to acknowledge your blind spots and try to correct them.
In my defense: I was raised Catholic in a German-Irish family in the Midwest. My people prefer to suffer and to do so in silence. I really never had a chance.
I would further suggest that the ocean of my True Feelings is perhaps not worth diving into. Wade past the obsessions with food and sex that dominate my daily existence, and, depending on my mood, the waters get pretty dark pretty quickly. When you wondered aloud about my feelings, were you wanting to discuss how all the things that humans spend their lives thinking about – relationships, careers, religion, mortality – are ultimately just distractions that serve to keep at bay the terrifying likelihood that our lives have no real significance? Because that is maybe what was on my mind when you asked.
Still, I take the point about my emotionally stunted personality, and that’s part of why I drove to Lawrence last week to speak with Jeffrey Hall. For the past seven years or so, Hall, a communications professor at the University of Kansas, has gathered research and conducted experiments on the topic of flirting. He has studied how people flirt in various environments – including, most recently, the Internet. Last year, Harlequin Books (the romance-novel house) published The Five Styles of Flirting: Use the Science of Flirting to Attract the Love You Really Want, Hall’s self-help book.
I was half-hoping that Hall might be some kind of romantic wizard, able to impart closely held trade secrets. But the man is no playboy. He’s a married academic, with kids. He wouldn’t even go to a bar with me to observe undergraduates in action.
“I’m kind of like the anti-pickup artist,” he told me, referring to the sleazy characters in The Game, Neil Strauss’ decade-old nonfiction best-seller about the seduction community. “As somebody with a feminist bias, I find their [pickup artists’] rape-y approach totally abhorrent.”
Hall’s research has led him to a handful of conclusions. One is that different people flirt differently, and that the common behaviors we tend to associate with flirting are far from the only ways people communicate attraction. As its title suggests, Hall’s book identifies five flirting “types.”
1. The Physical Flirt: Very forward, lots of body language, sexually charged. Does well in dance clubs.
2. The Polite Flirt: Very careful, doesn’t respond well to aggressive flirting, well-mannered. Does well in churches and coffee shops.
3. The Sincere Flirt: Wants to create a strong emotional connection immediately, very verbal. Good on a date.
4. The Playful Flirt: Sees flirting as a game. Often flirts nonsexually, to get out of parking tickets or close a deal. Thrives in bar culture.
5. The Traditional Flirt: Comfortable with men as the pursuers and women as passive and yielding.
Hall recommends taking his online quiz (at www.flirtingstyles.com) to learn what type you are, and then, based on it, consider adjusting the ways you seek out romantic partners.
“I think a lot of people, especially those in college or in their 20s, feel bad about themselves because they don’t know how to go to a bar and pick up somebody,” Hall said. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to communicate attraction. It just means they can’t do it at a bar. At a bar, the playful style of flirting is always going to win out. It’s appropriate to that context. I try to tell people that it’s OK if the bar isn’t your scene – you’re better off in a different context, so go to these other places.”
Because he has studied flirting on eHarmony and social networks, I was curious about Hall’s take on Tinder, the location-driven dating app that seems to be hitting its tipping point. I admitted that I had recently set up an account and found Tinder to be almost dangerously addictive – more like a video game than a relationship tool. And I asked him whether the greasy thrill of “matching” with somebody we find attractive might not be a healthy trade-off for a new paradigm of evaluating others in a matter of seconds based on a handful of selfies.
“My suspicion is, it’s being used by a lot of people looking for a quick self-esteem boost. I will say that online-dating studies have demonstrated that perusing face after face and picking the most attractive is not the healthy way to go, and that it is unlikely to lead to success. It gives you a distorted feeling of shopping for human beings, rather than trying to have a relationship with them.”
Hall is enthusiastic about online dating in general, though, which he called the “number one way Americans meet each other and marry.” He added: “The fact that it overcomes the biggest hurdle, identifying people who are single – just that access alone is monumental. And if you’re a certain type of person – a Sincere Flirt, for example – online dating is just so much better than the alternatives.”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much for me. Hall’s flirting quiz revealed that I have virtually no qualities common to Sincere Flirts. The quiz commentary stopped just short of calling me an emotionally hopeless robot: “In serious relationships, you are very unlikely to experience a strong emotional connection and sexual chemistry.” Eh, I’ve heard worse.
