Chapter 19 Key Takeaways
Defining Flirtation
Flirtation is the use of indirect, playful, and deniable signals of potential romantic interest, operating within a frame of ordinary friendly sociability. Its defining features — indirectness, playfulness, and deniability — are not failures of communication but are constitutive of the behavior's function.
Goffman's Dramaturgical Framework
Flirtation is illuminated by Goffman's concepts of front stage/back stage behavior, frame management, and face work. Flirtation operates by briefly stretching the friendly-sociability frame — introducing ambiguity about whether we are in a romantic register — while maintaining the ability to return to a purely social frame. This structure is inherently face-protective for both parties.
The Perper-Moore Sequence
The Perper-Moore sequence describes flirtation as a mutually negotiated, reciprocation-dependent escalation: approach/positioning, initial engagement (turn), progressive distance reduction (close), and touch/escalation. Each phase requires the other party's implicit acceptance. The sequence is not unilateral but bilateral: both parties are continuously signaling and reading.
Female Initiation
Contrary to the dominant cultural script of male-initiated courtship, ethological research (Moore 1985, Grammer 1990) consistently finds that women perform more courtship solicitation behaviors and that these behaviors strongly predict male approach. Early-phase initiation is more often female; approach behavior following the solicitation is more often male.
The Ambiguity Function
Flirtation's ambiguity serves multiple simultaneous functions: - Face-protection: Both parties can deny the signal was sent if not reciprocated - Quality testing: Detecting a subtle signal may reveal social intelligence - Arousal maintenance: Sustained uncertainty extends pleasurable tension - Strategic coordination: Low-cost early information gathering before explicit commitment
Ambiguity is the behavior's design, not a defect in its execution.
Rejection Ambiguity and the Overperception Bias
The same ambiguity that protects face in flirtation creates a genuine problem: the sexual overperception bias (more documented in men) is the tendency to interpret ambiguous friendly behavior as signaling more romantic interest than intended. This is a real population tendency with real consequences.
Cross-Cultural Variation
The Okafor-Reyes dual-structure model proposes: universal deep structure (graduated, deniable, reciprocation-based signaling) with culturally variable surface structure (specific behaviors). Flirtation translates across cultures at the structural level; the gesture vocabulary does not.
Digital Flirtation
Digital media transforms but does not eliminate flirtation's structural logic. Response latency, message length, emoji use, and timing substitute for unavailable nonverbal channels. Digital flirtation is often more ambiguous than face-to-face flirtation due to the absence of prosodic cues.
The "Friend Zone"
Research on cross-sex friendship perception finds that men systematically overestimate female friends' romantic interest, and that men are more likely to be romantically attracted to female friends than women to male friends. The source of this asymmetry is in the interested party's interpretation, not in deceptive behavior by the friend. The "friend zone" framing misattributes the source of the misread.
Key Terms
- Sexual script theory — Perper-Moore sequence — Solicitation behavior — Courtship escalation — Face work / face protection — Sexual overperception bias — Commitment overperception bias — Dual-structure model — Recreational vs. terminal flirtation