Flirting is a cultural phenomenon used by adolescents and adults when communicating with the opposite sex. The act involves showing some sort of attraction to the person you are communicating with, both verbally and nonverbally. Flirting, however, is difficult to define, because what may be flirting to one person could be just friendliness to another. Mistaking friendliness and flirting can lead to unwanted sexual advances. Gender differences in social-sexual interactions lead to misinterpretations of flirting and friendliness. The great philosopher Aristotle claimed that all communication is goal-oriented. NIU professor Dr. Henningsen agrees with Aristotle, saying there are 6 goal-oriented reasons why we flirt. He claims we flirt: to alter our relationships, to gauge the interest of others, for fun or playful interactions, for instrumental reasons, to increase our self-esteem, and to pursue sex (Henningsen 2013). Whether people flirt in the hopes of changing a friendship into a romantic relationship, to get somebody to do something for them, or to boost their own self-esteem, these personal reasons for flirting are not always evident to the person being flirted with. Because there is no definitive way to tell when someone is flirting with you, misinterpretations between the sexes ensues. Men and women use verbal and nonverbal communication cues to decode each others behavior. According to Hall (1998, p. 159), women are more accurate than men at interpreting nonverbal cues. Hall claims that the reason men misinterpret women’s verbal and nonverbal friendliness cues is because of “general male bias”. We are conditioned to follow social norms regarding sexual behavior, and these norms “produce differential expectations and perceptions of behaviors in mixed-sex encounters” (Hall, p. 838). Norms set by society and culture portray men as the pursuers and women as the ones being pursued. These norms and gender biases can be seen