Cocotongo

out to explore the nature of flirting in Britain today. What is flirting? How much do we flirt? What are the rules? What are the taboos? Who do we flirt with? Where are the hotbeds of flirting, and where are the no-go areas? And what about the future of flirting: how will our flirting habits have changed by the year 2020, and beyond?

We were particularly interested to discover how flirting habits may be affected by modern trends and innovations, such as the rise of the 'singleton' and the advent of email and internet dating. Which aspects of flirting are 'innate' and unchangeable, and which are influenced by new sociocultural trends and patterns? And of course, the Big Question: should women take the initiative and ask men out?

Methods

The research was conducted in three stages: a literature review, focus groups and a national survey. We have also drawn significantly on material from SIRC's ongoing 'social intelligence' monitoring of sociocultural trends and patterns, including data from observation fieldwork, participant observation studies and interviews.

Literature review

Using international database and library searches, SIRC collated and reviewed all of the most recent academic research papers, books and journal articles on the subject of flirting and related issues. A selected bibliography is included in this report.

Focus groups

Focus groups were conducted with a representative sample of young people. The focus groups explored their understanding and perceptions of flirting; the role of flirting in their lives; where, when, how and with whom they flirt; their personal rules and taboos; how new social trends have affected their flirting and dating habits; etc.

National survey

Analysis of the focus-group material provided the basis for a national survey, involving interviews with a representative sample of 1000 young people (aged 18-40) across the country. Respondents were asked a series of questions about their relationships and their flirting behaviour, designed to reveal the nature and patterns of flirting and mating in Britain today.

What is flirting?

In order to assess the impact of new social and cultural trends, it is essential to understand the more fundamental, instinctive aspects of flirting – the evolutionary 'roots' of our flirting habits.

Two types of flirting

Our review of the research on this issue, and the responses of participants in our focus groups, indicate that dictionary definitions of flirting only tell half the story. They tend to stress the playful, non-serious aspects of flirting, defining the verb 'to flirt', for example, as 'To behave or act amorously without emotional commitment' or 'To make playfully romantic or sexual overtures'.

This is the truth, but it is not the whole truth. Our research shows that there are two types of flirting. There is flirting for fun – the sense conveyed by the dictionary definitions – but there is also what we might call 'flirting with intent', that is flirting as part of the mate-selection and courtship process: flirting to get someone into bed, or into a relationship. One of our focus group participants expressed the views of many when he said:

"There's flirting to make a move on someone or flirting to have a laugh with someone."

Evolutionary hard-wiring

Flirting is a basic instinct, part of human nature. We are genetically programmed to flirt. If you think about it, this is hardly surprising: if we did not initiate contact and express interest in members of the opposite sex, we would not reproduce, and the human species would become extinct. We were not surprised, therefore, to find that only one percent of the respondents in our national survey said that they did not flirt.

Some evolutionary psychologists now argue that flirting may even be the foundation of civilization as we know it. The theory is that the large human brain – our complex

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