Jean has conducted an in-depth study looking at ways different cultures display and interpret attraction. She interviewed over 250 single men and women in London, New York, Paris, Chicago, Stockholm, and Dublin. She found that culturally specific influences, such as religion, history, economics, political beliefs and sociality all impacted the way in which attraction/flirting was exhibited.

She discovered particular aspects of social behaviour such as flirting rituals, people's perception of self, and how mores and social conditioning affect how people relate to each other.

Some of the things she learned from her research are:

• English males need more signals from a girl to understand if she is interested. They also rated themselves poor when it comes to knowing if a female was flirting with them.
• Due to greater economic equality, Swedish women have the opportunity to be more selective in social situations. This economic equality, in tangent with lack of social pressure for marriage, allows women greater freedom in their lifestyle. The Swedes also take flirting the most seriously, and therefore, do it the least often. As one woman said, “If you flirt you had better choose wisely, because you will be stuck with them for the whole evening.”
• Attitudes towards rejection affected how people flirted. By in large, the French attribute rejection in flirting situations to external factors, such as the venue was too noisy or the person they were trying to talk with was in a bad mood. They don't take rejection personally, and therefore, it impacts minimally on their self-esteem. Conversely, those who internalize rejection, allow it to affect their self-worth, and are less likely to engage in flirting situations.
• Reasons for flirting varied by cultures. It was used for a variety of reasons, from smoothing social situations, to making people feel good about themselves, to just a fun way to pass the time. New York males' main motivation for flirting was to 'hook up'. They were also most likely to expect an immediate 'reward' for their flirting efforts. New Yorkers in general, had no boundaries as to where flirting should occur. 'You can flirt anywhere' was the most common response.
• While others might perceive the Irish as flirty, due to their cultural attitude of 'a stranger is only a friend you haven't met yet' the Irish themselves claim they don't flirt, rather, they are just being friendly or as they would say 'having the craic'. This is important in analyzing their motivation, because by interpreting a situation as friendly rather than flirty, the fear of potential rejection carries less weight.

Some of this research was part of Jean's Master's dissertation in Social Anthropology. Read the full dissertation What Flirting Reveals about Equality: Examining Flirting Behavior in Gender Ideologies.