Chat-up lines as male displays: Effects of content, sex, and personality

Male chat-up lines and other opening gambits can be viewed, from an evolutionary perspective, as sexual displays. We extended an analysis of vignettes by Bale et al. (2006), using a larger sample to examine the inter-item relationships, and the effects of personality (EPQ-r and the Dating Partner Preference test) and sex of the judge on ratings for different groups of items. Principal components analysis identified four groups of items – good mate, compliment, sex (preferred by males), and humour (preferred by females). For female judges, extraversion and psychoticism influenced the ratings for the humour and good mate factors, respectively, while the ratings for the compliment and sex factors were influenced by one ‘Dating Partner Preference’ factor. We discuss the idea that chat-up lines may function both to attract females and to select the types of female who respond.