What drives men to flirt at work

The office hottie has been staring at you lately and you think great romance is finally on its way? Well, don’t get too excited. A new study says that the guy could be simply bored and looking for a break from his monotonous routine

The office hottie has been staring at you lately and you think great romance is finally on its way? Well, don’t get too excited. A new study says that the guy could be simply bored and looking for a break from his monotonous routine.

It’s office boredom rather than sparks of passion that drive men to flirt with female colleagues, say researchers of a new study conducted by a university in UK based on a survey of 200 people.

A follow-up questionnaire suggested that such workplace flirts had lower levels of "emotional intelligence", or understanding of other people’s feelings or even sensitivity.

The second study, but not the first, also indicated that women who flirted at work were happier at their jobs but researchers said the result could have been a fluke. Psychologists from Surrey University set out to test the theory that flirting could improve people’s chances of being promoted at work.

Adrian Banks, who led the study, said: “What we found was the complete opposite. Flirts don’t perform better at work and men who flirt are less satisfied with their jobs. There is strong evidence against that notion that you can flirt your way to the top.”

The researchers then carried out a second survey to establish whether men who flirted at work were different from their peers in any way. Flirtier men had lower levels of emotional intelligence, they found, meaning the men were worse at understanding other people’s emotions and controlling their own feelings.

This could have meant that they were less able to suppress flirtatious behaviour or judge whether their actions were inappropriate, Banks suggested. Although it was unclear why flirty men had less job satisfaction, one explanation could be that their behaviour was tied down to boredom, he Banks added.