The Perceived Effectiveness of Women's Pick-Up Lines: Do Age and Personality Matter?

One way to initiate a conversation for the purposes of mate attraction is to use a pick-up line. While past research has addressed men's use of pick-up lines, there has been far less research on those used by women. Here, we explored the perceived effectiveness of women's pick-up lines, particularly with regard to one's age but also as correlated with their Big Five personality factors. We hypothesized that both men and women would rate the same pick-up lines as effective and that older participants would rate pick-up lines as more effective than younger participants. Our results indicate that women's use of direct pick-up lines, sharing things in common, asking for a phone number, indirectly hinting at a date, and asking if single were perceived as most effective by both sexes. We did not support our prediction about age. The results demonstrate that of the Big Five dimensions, extraversion in particular is important and was positively correlated with perceived effectiveness. Public Significance Statement We examined the influence of age and Big Five personality dimensions on how effective men and women perceive women's pick-up lines to be. The findings show women's use of direct pick-up lines, sharing things in common, asking for a phone number, indirectly hinting at a date, and asking if single were perceived as most effective by both sexes. While age had a negligible influence, extraversion was particularly key in effectiveness ratings of women's pick-up lines.