Ladies, how would you feel if man walked up and said your “eyes are like morning dew”?
Pretty nervous, we’d imagine, if not downright terrified.
But according to Chinese scientists, this sort of pick up line is guaranteed to melt a woman’s heart.
Scientists at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China have published a new study called “Women prefer men who use metaphorical language when paying compliments in a romantic context” which suggests that poetic language is the way to a ladies’ heart.
It suggested lines like “Your smile is a naughty goblin” were likely to be more enticing than straightforward compliments like “your lips are so sexy.”
Likewise, the researchers said that men should approach women and say “your roof is a lover’s shoulder” or “your garden is the sea of flowers” rather than sticking to a more prosaic phrase like “your door is very strong.”
We’re not quite sure whether something has been lost in translation here, or if women in China like men to pay particular attention to their roofs and gardens.
“We found that the use of metaphorical as opposed to prosaic language by men in compliments is perceived by women as indicative of creativity and intelligence,” the researchers wrote in their paper, which was published in Nature.
“The preference observed for metaphorical compliments targeting a woman’s appearance compared to possessions may be indicative that this generates greater sexual attraction towards a potential mate.”
The team asked 36 men and nine women to draw up a total of 163 “verbal compliments.”
These pick up lines were then shown alongside images of men and the female participants were told to imagine the “male participants had been asked to write down a complimentary sentence after imagining a first visit to a future girlfriend’s house,” before ranking the attractiveness of the man in the picture on a scale of one to 10.
They found that the men with bigger, let’s say, metaphors were much more attractive than their less articulate competitors.
“This study provides the first evidence that women find men who typically use novel metaphorical language to compliment appearance more attractive than those using prosaic language or complimenting possession,” the team concluded.