Marius Stavang

That's one of the things we kind of wanted to find out.

Because on the one side, if you see it as from an evolutionary perspective, you don't think it is very much a cultural thing.

The underlying idea is that

To put it bluntly, it is pretty rare that a girl is interested in a guy in a romantic sexual setting.

That's sort of just how the statistics are.

But if you're like other men, it's...

Much more likely that the girls that you've been into, they probably haven't been that into you.

That's just how it is for men, right?

So kind of romantic and sexual opportunities for men, they are pretty rare throughout their lifetime often.

So the idea is that...

That one time or a couple of times when she is interested in you, it's important to sort of not let that opportunity pass.

So the idea is that men have this hypersensitivity to any romantic sexual interest from women.

So when it is there, they won't like fail to notice it and they will be able to pick up on it, but at the cost of more often misperceiving her friendliness at romantic interest.

It is a very statistically cool thing.

And on the bright side, I did enjoy the findings in this paper that at age 16, this tendency wasn't really that strong in men.

It did grow in strength from 16 to 19, which points towards this could be a cultural, social thing, right?

That perhaps men sort of... There is this social mechanism that sort of makes...

men sort of expect that women are interested in them.

So that could be at play here.

When it comes to dating and single and sort of people's romantic sexual experience, it is even regardless of whether differences between men and women are learned or kind of biological, they seem to be very robust.