For a study in the journal Sex Roles, University of Alaska psychologist Chris L. Kleinke asked 600 respondents to rate the effectiveness of three varieties of opening lines in a flirtatious situation:
• "Pick-up" lines like "You must be a librarian, because I saw you checking me out"
• Open-ended, innocuous questions like "What do you think of this band?" or "What team are you rooting for?"
• Direct approaches like "You're cute — can I buy you a drink?"
The responses were pretty evenly split along gender lines: While the men in the study tended to prefer the more direct approach, the women tended to prefer the open-ended, innocuous questions. Not surprisingly, very few people said they preferred the pick-up lines.