Tracking Men’s Perceptions of Women’s Sexual Interest

Abstract

Judging a woman’s current sexual interest in a specific man is a socially and emotionally complex decision. These judgments can be considered a form of perceptual decision-making in which men integrate both affective (emotional) and nonaffective cues. College men at risk of sexual aggression rely less on women’s affective cues and more on nonaffective cues, suggesting that cognitive processes may matter for real-world problems. However, in the real world, people may not have the luxury of waiting for processes to complete before they act. Recent work has used dynamic-competition models of decision-making to examine this problem. These models assume that affective judgments (such as interested vs. rejecting) are partially activated by multiple cues and compete over time. This work, in which mouse tracking is used to index partial decision states, demonstrates that on-line measures predict rape-supportive attitudes over and above off-line (judgment) measures. This offers a new way to understand the cognitive core of an important societal problem.

Accurately detecting happy facial expressions associates with perceptions of flirtatiousness

“…We first hypothesized that individuals who had more difficulty identifying anger or disgust (i.e., negative affect) when present would tend to overperceive flirtatiousness, and that this would at least partially account for the anticipated effect of sex. This hypothesis aligns with findings about the importance of sensitivity to negative affective cues in accurately detecting levels of sexual interest (Treat et al, 2019). Next, we hypothesized that – regardless of accuracy – those who more frequently identified facial expressions as emoting happiness would also overperceive levels of flirtation.…”

“…More specifically, if an expressed negative emotional display is missed, a person may overestimate the other party’s sexual interest, which aligns with findings that men prone to sexual misconduct tend to be less sensitive to women’s negative affective cues (Treat et al, 2019). Overestimations of sexual intentions can also result from ambiguously valenced emotions, such as surprise.…”

“…Humans are highly sensitive to emotional faces (Calvo & Esteves, 2005) and automatically process the information contained therein, which permits dynamic evaluation and decision-making during social interactions. With respect to flirtation, individuals often weigh multiple, tentative hypotheses about a candidate partner’s sexual intentions (Treat et al, 2019), and there is evidence that both males and females use emotional cues to update appraisals of sexual interest (Perilloux et al, 2012). Presumably, in the context of a dating situation, expressed positive affect (e.g., happiness) will be more aligned with flirtatiousness than negative affects (e.g., anger, disgust), which may be antagonistic to perceptions of sexual interest.…”

“…Thus, flirtatiousness must be discriminated from ancillary information, as well as behaviors better characterized as politeness, friendliness, or mere happiness (Farris et al, 2010). There may also be internal processes that influence perceptions of sexual interest (Koenig et al, 2007; Perilloux et al, 2012; Ranganath et al, 2009; Treat et al, 2019), such as individuals projecting their own attraction when gauging the sexual interest of another. While misconstrued sexual intent in many situations may be easily corrected; in some situations, it may lead to inappropriate comments, sexual overreach, or the discounting of even overt signs of rejection, thereby facilitating coercive or assaultive behavior (Muehlenhard et al, 2016).…”

A Dress Is Not a Yes: Towards an Indirect Mouse-Tracking Measure of Men’s Overreliance on Global Cues in the Context of Sexual Flirting

“…Especially if no verbal communication has taken place yet, a facial expression conveying positive affect can be understood as a possible invitation to further contact and approach (Miles, 2009 ). Using a mouse-tracking (MT) paradigm, Treat et al ( 2020 ) showed that men at greater risk of exhibiting sexual aggression against women are more inclined to evaluate women’s sexual interest based on inappropriate global rather than appropriate specific cues, i.e., based rather on normative attractiveness and provocative clothing than on the affect a woman displays. The correlations found by Treat et al ( 2020 ) point to the also theoretically plausible link between individual propensity for OGC and an increased risk for problematic sexual behavior.…”