

Personal interest questions: How was your weekend?.Suggest familiarity: Have we met before?.Say something funny/sexual humour: Wanna make out?.Indirectly hint at a date: What are you doing later this weekend?.Ask about shared interests: Do you watch The Wire?.Give out phone number, or ask for a call: You should call me.Ask if single: Do you have a girlfriend?.Directly ask out on a date: Want to go get dinner?.Here are the 10 categories (with examples) from most to least direct pick up lines: Researchers sorted these pick up lines into 10 categories, then 40 men and women rated them in order of perceived directness. įorty women aged between 19 and 22 were asked to list the types of pick up lines they might use to signal their interest in dating a man. These questions are addressed in a study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences ( Wade et al., 2009). Perhaps it comes as no surprise that men prefer pick up lines to be direct.īut, do men and women agree on what a direct approach is and why such directness is necessary in the first place? The types of pick up lines whose effectiveness was under-estimated by men were those involving offers of help to women, handing control of the interaction to women and (subtly) displaying wealth (surprise surprise!). Men also tended to be worse than women at judging what types of pick up lines women prefer. The results for men’s perceptions showed that in comparison to women, men were more likely to prefer pick up lines involving sex (surprise surprise!) as opposed to women who preferred humour. Perhaps to reflect this men’s perceptions of women’s pick up lines were also included in this study. I have focussed on women’s perceptions of male pick up lines as in most cultures it’s mostly the men using the lines, although this is changing. Those looking for a ‘bad mate’ might use a sexually-loaded remark or a compliment, while those wanting an extrovert should use a joke. This can effectively allow men to make a quick assessment of a woman’s personality by their response to a particular type of approach. It does seem, then, that the type of pick up lines men choose does have a measurable effect on the type of women who respond to them. Women high in psychoticism rejected ‘nice guys’, preferring the ‘bad mate’.Women high in neuroticism preferred the ‘nice guys’.Women high in extraversion preferred the male ‘leaders’.

Looking at the correlations shows there is support for the idea that pick up lines select for women with particular personalities. Now we’ve got all the information we need to see if there’s any connection.

But there’s something about him…Īlong with these vignettes and the Dating Partner Preference Test, participants were asked to fill in personality measures of their psychoticism (tendency for inappropriate emotional responses and recklessness), extraversion (being outgoing, gregarious, externally oriented) and neuroticism (the tendency to experience negative emotional states). He’s chatty, confident and strong-willed – a captain of your heart? Yes, he’s helpful, he’s considerate, he’s appreciative. Four types of menįor this they completed the Dating Partner Preference Test.Īn analysis of these results suggests women see men as generally falling into one of four types: Next we need to find out what types of men the female participants prefer. So, now we know, generally speaking, how our female participants react to these four broad types of pick up lines. “I may not be Fred Flintstone, but I can sure make your bedrock.” (Club to the head.) “You remind me of a parking ticket because you’ve got fine written all over you.” (Please. “You know I saw this fantastic piece in the Tate Modern”. Good mate – these pick up lines included comments that made reference to culture, character or wealth.These pick up lines were collated from a variety of sources and clustered into the following categories: Participants were then asked to rate how likely it was the conversation would continue on the basis of that pick up line. In each the man used a different type of pick up line.

#Pick up lines for him series#
The study first asked participants to consider a series of scenarios in which men tried to strike up a conversation with a woman. That’s the theory and here’s how Cooper and colleagues searched for evidence. Similarly, at the other end of the scale, men who use character-revealing or culture-based pick up lines are probably trying to show they are a good mate looking for a long-term partner. In other words, men using sexually-loaded remarks are looking for a certain type of woman. Pick up lines may be a way for men to select for a particular type of woman.
