The study had 28 women and 26 men, all of college age, watch videos of speed-dating sessions. They were then asked to gauge the interest of the speed-date participants. Both sexes were much better at gauging male interest, even when comparing "hard to read" men with "hard to read" women:

"In five of the videos, 80 percent of the observers thought the women shown were interested when in fact they were not — they were acting friendly even though they had no interest in the men."

Here's my favorite quote from study co-author Skyler Place: "Nobody could really read what these deceptive females were doing, including other women."

Uh, maybe they really were just being friendly? As if you needed another reason to slap on your bitchface.

Don't Take Flirtatious Women For Granted [Psychological Science via Times of India]

Although it's no surprise that men are slightly more clueless then women when it comes to interpreting nonverbal cues, study leader Coreen Farris tells Science Daily, "The data doesn't support the idea that all men are bad at this or that all women are great at this...It's a small difference."

Where it does make a difference though, is in the small number of men who mistake friendliness for sexual interest and then use that "friendliness" as an excuse for sexual coercion. According to Science Daily, "studies such as this should help establish a better understanding and a baseline for young men's perceptions of sexual intent and contribute to efforts aimed at preventing sexual aggression."

The Untrained Eye: Confusing Sexual Interest With Friendliness [Science Daily]
Study: Men, Women Confuse Sexual Cues [UPI]

The research uncovers that men will text back their crush within the hour (57 minutes). Women, however, leave their dates hanging 22 minutes longer, taking an average of 1 hour 19 minutes to reply. Don't leave it any longer than 2 hours 36 minutes, though — this is officially the point when 'playing it cool' becomes 'plain rude.' ... Once again it is the women who leave men hanging after the first date, waiting an average of up to 2 hours 45 minutes compared to 1 hour 51 minutes to text their crush afterwards.

Okay. Is the UK a totally different universe? Texting back within hours of wrapping up the first date? Because here in the US it seems like most guys still subscribe to that ridiculous, old-fashioned "wait three days" rule. And are women really so slow in texting back? Because most we know are of the variety who reply to texts immediately. And correct us if we're wrong, but don't most men set out to use as few words as possible while texting? So that you're staring at the screen, trying to decode the message, wondering what its brevity could possibly mean?

So yeah, English men? The ones who send perfect texts, which, by the way, "take 1 minute 12 seconds to compose" according to the study? We'd like them to text us. Because we our phone is painfully silent today.

The Joy of Text [Cellular News]