And the survey said

[Adam L. Beberg]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Lisa Dusseault wrote:

> Get a woman to perform this survey & I guarantee the results will be very
> different.  I can't recall the last time I smiled at a man & he didn't smile
> back.  Women mostly smile back too.

Dah... Smiling is one of those pre-modern signals.

Smiling back means either:
1) Lets team up to keep the males from killing our young.
2) Lets have sex.
3) Want some food?

Thus, women will smile at each other, men will always smile back at a woman,
and women will smile back only at a male of high social status.

> A good location for smiling is a bus stop or train stop.  By waiting
> together, there's enough commonality of purpose, I presume, to make it "OK"
> for smiling, and people have enough time to notice.

I find the opposite, as the waiting makes the "if they dont smile back" oh
so much worse. Usually any eye contact will freak people out in a city of
more then say 50k people. (of course, that could just be to my appearance)

- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
  http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/
  beberg@mithral.com