“Once we expect something we tend to see it,” says Antonia Abbey, from Wayne State University, a social psychologist who studies relationships. “If you think someone is sexually attracted to you, you watch for it more. Like when a person leans forward or laughs, or whatever – they view [that] as a sexual sign. They might not notice that when they leaned in the other person backed off.”

In the next stage of the experiment, the researchers invited other people to watch the conversation unfolding and were also asked to rate how attracted each party was to the other. Male observers agreed with the man; they thought the woman was more attracted to him than she reported herself. Female observers agreed with the women; they thought that there was less attraction between them. So far, both Harry and Sally are correct.

This might be due to our gender stereotypes. Researchers like Abbey study the exchanges between people initiating romantic interest – called dating “scripts”. These scripts can reveal the sequence of events that lead to successful or unsuccessful pursuits of romance – and it turns out we often have pre-defined roles.

“Context really matters in interactions like this,” says Abbey. “Men might be looking for signs of attraction more than women because traditional gender roles suggest men take the initiative. It sounds old fashioned in 2019, but there have been quite a few qualitative studies that ask about dates and people tend to still have a lot of those traditional themes around who asks whom out, who pays and things like that. Women hold back and men feel the burden to take the lead.”

If heterosexual men tend to be the initiators, what happens between lesbian couples? Compared with gay men, lesbians’ scripts are more focused on intimacy and less on sex. For bisexuals, even though their sexual attraction does not fit with heteronormative sexuality, their actions still match traditional expectations. So, bisexual women still behave as you would expect a heterosexual woman to behave on a date – by avoiding initiation.