Study: Men, women confuse sexual cues

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., April 2 (UPI) -- College-age men confuse friendly non-verbal cues with cues for sexual interest, however, women are not much better, U.S. researchers said.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, found men who viewed images of friendly women misidentified 12 percent of the images as sexually interested, while women mistook 8.7 percent of the friendly images for sexual interest.

The study involved 280 heterosexual college-age men and women with an average age of 19.6. Seated in a private computer room, the men and women each categorized 280 photo images of women -- full body, fully clothed -- into one of four categories: friendly, sexually interested, sad or rejecting.

When viewing images of sexually interested women, men mistakenly called 37.8 percent of the images "friendly" while women mistook 31.9 percent of the sexual interest cues for friendliness.

The researchers at Indiana University Bloomington and Yale University found that both men and women were least accurate at correctly identifying the photos indicating sexual interest.

"The data don't support the idea that all men are bad at this or that all women are great at this," lead author Coreen Farris, a doctoral student at IU Bloomington said in a statement. "It's a small difference."