Men and women who seek to attract potential partners often initiate contact using some flirtation strategy.

The effectiveness of different flirting strategies will depend on who's flirting, and for what purpose.

Effective strategies are quite consistent across cultures and individual personalities.

Men and women who seek to attract potential partners for either short-term hookups or long-term romantic relationships often initiate contact using some flirtation strategy, which may involve verbal (opening lines, humor) or nonverbal (dress, dance moves, smile, gift-giving) behavior.

Human flirtation, we may note, is unique within the animal kingdom, in which males seek to attract a potential mate’s attention by honestly representing their quality, allowing females to choose the best males by selecting those that produce the highest-intensity signals. Human flirting behavior, however, is characterized by subtlety, ambiguity, and covertness. Why would that be?

University of Pennsylvania psychologists Andrew Gersick and Robert Kurzban (2014) proposed that the explanation is rooted in the potential social costs of human flirting to all involved: judgment, hostility, rejection, humiliation, reputational damage, etc. In this view, flirters who are flexible and socially attuned, adjusting to social context and minimizing risk, are viewed by the receivers favorably, signaling that they possess broader behavioral flexibility and social intelligence, both of which are........

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