Women everywhere are trying to tell you something important: that they want you. But as this man learnt, you probably aren't listening

During my first year at university, I attended a traffic-light party at the student-union bar. Attendees were to wear red, yellow or green to indicate their degree of sexual availability. In my naïveté, I cobbled together an outfit entirely in hues of forest, lime and olive greens. I earnestly believed that traffic-light parties might be a step toward a society where our wants and needs - my wants and needs - were out in plain view and then we - I! - could transcend the folly of posturing, artifice and coded messages and begin the business of living and loving!

As it turned out, I was the only partygoer wearing an all-green outfit. I took my social beating and left the bar alone. On the way home, I made peace with the fact that (a) my perpetually burning green light might never provoke a rush of traffic and (b) posturing, artifice and coded messages are systemic in human beings.

Since then, though, I've always held out hope that there might be a way to reckon the workings of the female mind and, like some libidinous super villain, that I could harness that power. It would be like donning x-ray specs for a look at her horny soul.

So imagine my surprise when I learnt that there does, in fact, exist a way to discern women's wants and needs, likes and dislikes with nary a word being uttered. What's more, it's not an unwieldy "thought-helmet"; it's grounded in scientific fact. I'm learning how to hone this ability and by reading the next few pages, you can too.

The "secret" is nonverbal communication. You probably think of it as simple body language, but lately researchers have identified a slew of indicators that can signal what a person may be thinking.


Nonverbal communication predates spoken language in humans by hundreds of thousands of years, is used by just about every species on the planet and is almost certainly a more reliable gauge of someone's thinking than the torrent of garbage that spills from our mouths. In his 1872 work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin theorised that not all facial expressions and their corresponding emotions are culturally determined, but are, in fact, universal to human culture and biological in origin.

What does that mean to you? That you can figure out if you have a shot with a girl whether you're in Akron or Addis Ababa.

Dr Dana Carney is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of psychology at Harvard. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed and stunning, she doesn't look like your typical scientist, but she is a renowned expert in the fields of social perception, social neuroscience and nonverbal communication. Put bluntly, Carney can read what's going on in a social situation like Keanu can see the Matrix. Over a few hours in New York City, Carney will be informing my behaviour so I can up my game through the cunning use of semiotics, the study of social signs and other visual cues.

In the broadest terms, her lesson is that a man should communicate the following:

I'm here, I'm male and I won't hurt you. Unfortunately for us, it's a little more complicated than storming into a bar blasting an air horn and wearing nothing but a pink ribbon T-shirt.

"According to evolutionary scientists like David Buss, women want men who express alpha status," says Carney, simultaneously enlightening me and dashing my hopes forever. "Research indicates that perceived dominance is expressed through using a loud voice, speaking a lot, making eye contact, touching, taking up lots of space and successfully interrupting others."

For a soft-spoken, 64-kilogram, 173-centimetre tall man-boy like myself, this isn't the news I'd been dying to hear. I take up very little space and continually interrupting others has, in the past, yielded only a fat lip.

"Should a non-alpha-type male just lower his expectations?" I ask.

"No, not at all," she assures in a comforting tone. "Women are also attuned to a man's intelligence, which indicates potential resource stability. This can be expressed through being engaged when another person is talking, nodding one's head,and making 'back-channel' comments like 'Ah, I see', 'Yeah' and 'Oh'. Engagement is also expressed by making lots of eye contact and asking questions."

"Ah, I see," I say, nodding and making lots of eye contact. "So what is a man attuned to in a woman's behaviour?"

"Well, there are 'immediacy behaviours' that are predictive of affiliation, intimacy and interest," she says. "They include (1) gazing in your general direction, (2) making mutual eye contact, (3) smiling and (4) establishing closer physical proximity. You also want to pay close attention to her baseline demeanor - that is to say, notice whether you see a change in her behaviour when she becomes aware of you. Deviation from her baseline, plus one or more of items 1 through 4 and you're in good shape."


When body signals betray a pitcher or a poker player, they're called "tells". Among psychological scientists, it's known as "nonverbal leakage". Paul Ekman, a professor of Psychology at the University of California, spent decades studying these pinhole ruptures in our psyches, exposing the "micro-expressions" that give us away to those we are trying to deceive. One practical application of Ekman's life's work has been his assistance in putting together the US Transportation Security Administration's revised behavioural-screening procedures post-9/11. It turns out that Shakira wasn't speaking metaphorically when she said her hips don't lie. They can't.

So, given how fully and rapidly a person can be assessed using semiotic data, I ask Carney what she's learned about me in the 30 minutes she's known me.

"From your behaviour today, I know you're funny, very emotionally demonstrative and you put on a little show for people when you first meet them," she says.


I always felt that my being "emotionally demonstrative" was my Achilles' heel. After two or three beers, my poker face inevitably becomes my "poke-her!" face. But now all that might change: I have a scientist perverting her training to get me all up in some unwitting girl's business.

So we hit the town in earnest. Read more - click here.