Scenario #1
THE BOOKSTORE

For the first field test, we head to the nearest bookstore café. Some of my female friends suggested that this is a place where men and women are constantly throwing out the vibe. My esteemed doctor wing-woman concurs.

"I've always thought bookstore cafés are interesting," says Carney. "There seems to be a lot more going on in this situation than people reading books and drinking coffee. I mean, look at all the preening and primping going on here among the females; they seem very aware and self-conscious. This can give us a lot of information about whether or not they're open to being approached."

Together, we single out a woman in her mid-twenties who is both attractive and more concerned with fixing her hair and furtively looking around, than with the tome she's idly flicking through. The plan is for me to initiate contact as Carney analyses the interaction from a respectful distance. As I ready myself to join the woman at the table, our mark rises and strolls over to the New Nonfiction table.

"Damn, I've spooked her!" I hiss.

"Don't worry," Carney assures me. "Follow her over there and start chatting."

In the interest of science, I saunter over. She is reading a biography of Chairman Mao during the People's Revolution.

"That looks like a fun read," I say with an awkward grin.

She presses her lips together in a contemptuous smile. Silence.

"But when it comes to tyrannical despots, you really can't beat Stalin, for my money."

She laughs at my joke quite loudly, cutting the tension, though I notice that her shoulder is positioned so that she's showing her back to me a little. The torso unwittingly orients toward people we like, admire or agree with and angles away from those we dislike or disagree with. Richard Nixon was often pictured rotating his torso 90° from his advisers (0° is completely facing and 180° is turning one's back completely). With her body at about 110°, she resumes reading the jacket cover.

"I'm more of a creative-nonfiction fan myself," I offer, to keep some momentum going. I reach out for the nearest book of that sort. "I can totally recommend this one." She nods her head, but keeps her eyes fixed on Mao. Silence.

"Okay, see ya!" I say, admitting to myself that it was a bust,and begin to slink off, my tail between my legs somewhat.

"Have you read Running with Scissors?" she asks, resuscitating the exchange after I'd presumed it dead.

"Um . . . no," I lie.

"It's good," she says, then turns back to her book.

"Okay, I'll check it out," I say and again begin to retreat.

I make it a few steps before she calls out, "It's by Augusten Burroughs. It's over there." As she says the words "over there", she motions over her shoulder with her thumb in a "hit-the-road-Jack" kinda way that makes me think she's had enough of me.

"Ugh, that didn't go so great," I say as Carney and I hit the street again.

"I wouldn't say that," she says in a knowing tone. "There was some hair fixing and I noticed that she really laughed at what you said. But she was talking to you over her shoulder and eye contact was fleeting, so there were conflicting signals. She didn't seem to make an effort to close the distance between you, but she did seem somewhat interested. Both times you began to walk away, she started up the conversation again. After you walked away the second time, she turned to see if you were looking, then immediately started reading the back of the book you pointed out to her."

"Damn! Should I go back in there and try to get her number?" I ask Carney.

"No, we learnt what we could. Let's try somewhere else. There are plenty of experimental subjects around." Read: "cute girls".

Even a Harvard psychologist will confess that meeting women is, at its root, a numbers game.

Scenario #2
THE DIVE BAR

Entering a dive bar in the New York's East Village, we immediately head for a table in a shadowy back corner. It's only around 7pm, but this is the sort of joint where no-one hesitates to get their slur on. There are about 20 people in the place. Sitting at the bar is a cluster of women, all with bad-arse sleeves of tattoos, cockatoo hairdos and stripy clothes in all the colours of the Day-Glo rainbow. I am about to go up and squeeze in among them to order drinks when Carney stops me.

"It's important to establish a baseline first," she instructs. "You have to get a feel for a woman's normal social behaviour and from that baseline, you can discern where that behaviour deviates when you establish eye contact or move into close proximity."

To interpret my girl whisperer: if you go charging in, you might find out the hard way that a woman's apparent flirtations with you are actually her normal mode of interacting with people.

From our vantage point, we concur that the seven women and one man are friends, since they are all interacting and involved in one conversation. All the women are fairly attractive. We spend the next few minutes taking a baseline reading for each of them. There's the quiet one, the cute one, the alpha one, the sullen-looking one, the lustful-looking one; it's like we're deconstructing the Pussycat Dolls, great fun in itself.

Satisfied that we have the lay of the land, I walk the length of the bar, then double back and insert myself into the thick of them and order drinks. I get the briefest of little smiles from "cute", but otherwise I can't discern much change in behaviour. From her vantage point, however, Carney is able to observe some interesting things.

"Out of all the girls, the quiet one with the brown hair showed the most extreme behavioural deviation from neutral," she begins. "First, as you approached, she sort of stiffened up and sat at attention. There was some lip pouting, which can be associated with desire. Though she didn't gaze at you, she was very aware of you in her peripheral vision and immediately touched her face and then her hair with her hand, which can also be associated with desire."

"As you walked by," she continues, "she looked over her shoulder at you and when you leaned in amongst them all, she suddenly got bigger: her voice got louder and her facial expressions and gesticulations became more exaggerated. Then she glanced at you as you walked back over here."

"Wow, you saw all that?" I ask.

"Sure. So we can say that she was probably acutely aware of your presence and possibly somewhat desirous. As she seemed to be concerned with where you were going, she did some preening and then made pains to stand out from the pack, maybe aware that she typically has less presence than some other members of the group. So if you're thinking of making contact, I would initially single her out as being quite receptive."

With a behavioural scientist like Dana Carney as my permanent pick-up consigliore, I could truly be the scourge of the female population. It'd almost be unfair.

"Should I go over and start chatting her up?" I ask, emboldened by Carney's observations. "What if she just becomes fidgety?"

I look over at our mark.

"Well, go to the bar again and we'll see if she exhibits any more telling behaviour and then . . . Look!" Carney is suddenly excited. "She's making an unnatural series of orientation and posture changes so she can remain visible to you in the crowd of girls. I'd guess that she knows you have a lock on her."

The girl in question isn't necessarily the first woman in the group I'd gravitate to, but the idea that she's interested in me suddenly makes her much more attractive.

"So, now that we can assume she's somewhat interested, go up to the bar and see if she makes any slip-ups in her speech: mispronouncing words, forgetting what she's saying, trailing off mid-sentence. It could be indicative of cognitive load - her mind is so preoccupied with your presence that it exerts a strain on what she was initially doing."

I stand up and catch our target's eye. We both look away and then catch each other in another fleeting glance. As I approach, she dives into her purse and pulls out a compact, then checks her lipstick and tousles her bangs. Preening, I think to myself.

"So, go on!" says the friend perched on the bar stool next to her as I get closer.

"Um . . . yeah, so . . . uh . . . I was like, 'I'm not coming' . . . and then . . . um . . ."

Either my would-be girlfriend has a mental impairment or, as Carney suggested, her speech is faltering under the cognitive load of my approach. Retreating to my table one last time, I ask Carney if there are any nonverbal-communication techniques I can utilise when approaching a woman within a group.

"Research shows that in a group of women, each individual is less of an independent entity than individuals in a group of men would be," says Carney. "For instance, in my experience, if a woman in a group just left the bar out of the blue, it would be a big fuss, as if a child had been lost. 'Where did she go?' 'Is she okay?' 'Did you call her?' 'When did you see her last?' Right? There would be a big fuss with her about why she left - it would be a fairly big deal.

Contrast that with a guy unexpectedly leaving his group at a bar. You'd say, 'Oh, he probably met some girl' and that would be that. So, because of the inherent structure of female groups, I think it's safe to say that you do want to talk to her friends, engage them, be interested in them and convince them to trust you. I imagine the approval of her friends can make or break your chances sometimes."

I'm here, I'm male and I'm not going to hurt you!

With an atypical swagger brought about by feeling like the Jedi master of seduction, I accost my raven-haired subject as she's paying her tab and hit her with a corny line that I'd used before with marginal success.

"Hey, I was sitting over there figuring out what I was going to say to you and I had a bunch of great stuff, but now you're leaving!"

"You snooze, you lose!" she says as I take in the nonverbal indicators as per Carney's tuition:

Cocked eyebrow: disdain/superciliousness. Bad.

Wry smile: interest/like. Good.

Angular distance - 45° / guarded. Bad.

Pout - desire/interest. Good.

It's a bit of a mixed bag.

"It's all too late now, but I really think you ought to hear some of the lines I had worked up. Then you can use them on cute guys if you like."

Laughing - like/amusement. Good.

"Oh yeah?" she says.

Touches hair - preening/interest. Good.

"Yeah, give me your number and we'll get together and you can write them all down."

More laughing - like/amusement. Good.

Closing the distance - like/affiliation. Good.

Angular distance decreasing - 15°. Bingo.

Becky writes her number on a napkin and puts it in my hand. Then she zips up her coat and leaves the laboratory. Lab rat gets girl.

Scenario #3
THE BLIND DATE

Flushed with that success, I feel ready to go solo, then recount my evening to Carney for the post-date analysis. This is a blind date, set up by a mutual friend. I'd met Adrianna in passing before and with some cajoling, had imposed on our mutual friend Lisa to relinquish her contact details. We arranged to meet over e-mail and, two nights later, get together at a bar. I remembered that Adrianna is attractive, but I didn't recall her being quite as beautiful as she appears, striding in out of the cold.

"Hey!" she says with exuberance - big smile, wide eyes.

I hesitate over whether to shake her hand or give her a hug, given that we'd spoken only for a few minutes, all told, but she initiates a warm clinch that lasts at least several seconds.

"It's great to see you," I say, smiling, but replaying my mantra in my head: I'm here, I'm male and I'm not going to hurt you.

"It's so great to see you," she says.

We're facing each other squarely, our hands on each other's elbows.

"Can I get you something to drink?"

"What are you drinking?" she asks.

"Brooklyn Lager."

"Nice, I'll have one, too."

A manifestation of mimicking, perchance?

We sit at a high table for two. Initially the stools are positioned on opposite sides of the square table, but I notice that a few minutes into a very lively and natural-feeling chat, she's seamlessly shuffled her stool so that it's perpendicular with mine and now our knees touch slightly.

Closing distance/touching . . . It's looking good!

Am I putting a disproportionate amount of stock into Carney's tutelage? Did Adrianna know that she was effectively saying, "Take me, I'm yours"?

One thing I notice is that we're giving each other plenty of eye contact, back-channel comments and relevant questions. We're telling each other that we are mutually engaged, interested and not even mildly cretinous. After we finish our beers, Adrianna says she is in the mood for a really spicy Bloody Mary and, in the spirit of mimicry, I order one as well. When I get back from the bar, she places her hand on mine.

When I later recount the hand touch to Carney, she says, "Touching in this intimate setting is very telling. There are two of you alone in close proximity. She didn't need to work to get your attention, nor was she trying to persuade you or enlist you in some activity. So it seems the touch had no other purpose than to signal approach. Although I don't necessarily agree with this, in the 21st century, the onus is still on the male to make the advances."

After 90 minutes with both of us faithfully mimicking each other - right down to the swaying and slurring of words - we come to the conclusion that we are hungry and head off to one of my favourite eateries. We are put at a corner table and again sit perpendicular to each other. Knees touching, leaning in so that our faces are about 30cm apart.

"My intuition and anecdotally based sense, coloured by my scientific expertise, suggest that face closeness in the absence of necessity is certainly a sign of approach, feelings of liking, feelings of intimacy," Carney later observes. "There is little doubt in my mind that close faces are more indicative than close knees. Further, you can think practically about kissing behaviour and how having your faces close is a prerequisite for that."

All the signs look good as I walk Adrianna to get a taxi and I feel that the arctic wind whistling around us may have made our goodbye shorter than I would have liked. After dinner, the prospects of a hook-up - something that had seemed a foregone conclusion until then - seem to recede slightly. We hug briefly and she mentions getting together in a group-of-friends scenario, which after all my analysis seems like a bit of a letdown.

I ask Carney if I might have interpreted Adrianna's nonverbal behaviour early in our date too optimistically.

"No. Nonverbal behaviour, which is often emotionally based and automatic and uncontrollable, can be much more telling than controlled responses, like what you say. Maybe she felt insecure about all her approach behaviour, since you didn't kiss her or otherwise clearly indicate your interest."

This is how a scientist calls you a pussy.

"Perhaps her mention of a group date was her effort to mitigate the clear clues she sent before. Maybe she was trying to 'correct' - that is, use choice words to artificially pull back her previous automatic, nonverbal expressions of liking."

This makes me feel even worse.

Unlike the two million other species on this planet, humans alone have the ability to "take back" or otherwise qualify instinctual nonverbal behaviour through spoken language. A female baboon can't present her big red arse all day, then suggest to her suitor that they just be friends. It's because she can trust the male baboon to do what's right for her and her species.

I encouraged Adrianna into major presenting behaviour, then failed to answer. A nonverbal illiterate!

Since meeting with Dana Carney, I've noticed that women seem more nuanced in this form of communication and have greater control over the messages they're sending. So when they utter the universal female complaint - "Guys are so stupid" - maybe they're right. And it might just be because of what we don't say and how we don't say it.