Projo Offbeat Blog

Good news, guys. Those women who pass us on the street or in the hall without acknowledging our existence aren't snobs.

They're just playing it safe.

They also probably think that we're idiots, and we'll misinterpret the slightest friendly gesture, such as a smile or a "hello," as an invitation to have sex.

So they don't take any chances.

At least that's my theory, and a new study backs me up.

Here's how the Web site Livescience.com reports on the study: More often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on, and a new study discovers why: Guys are clueless.

"Young men just find it difficult to tell the difference between women who are being friendly and women who are interested in something more," lead researcher Coreen Farris of Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, tells the Web site.

For the study, researchers had a group of college students look at images of women on a computer screen and try to figure out if they were sexually interested, or just being friendly, rejecting or displaying sadness.

Guess what. The men had lots of trouble discerning between the come-hither and get-lost looks.

Bolstering the guys-are-clueless theory is that about 70 percent of college women report an experience in which a guy mistook her friendliness for a sexual come-on, researcher Farris said.

I suspect that most women have known this all along, and so many of them have taken to ignoring strange men so we don't become nuisances.

Reacting to the story in the Web site's comments section, at least one guy suggested that men get better picking up these clues as we get older. I'm a long way from college, and I'm not so sure about that.

At least one other guy claimed that it's not our fault, that women should get better at sending signals. But we guys might be confused beyond help. When the men in the study were shown pictures of women trying to be seductive, the men thought they were just being friendly.

It's amazing the human species has made it this far.

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