SIRC in the News 1997
- Times – 23.12.1997
Think you can pull women? Pull the other one. Nowadays most men, according to scientists at Stanford University in California, are just too shy to flirt. Kate Fox, director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, says that part of this fear of flirting "is caused by overzealous political correctness, which has come out of concerns about sexual harassment". Men who were once bewitched are now merely bothered and bewildered by the whole flirting ritual. Some of them are so bewildered that they have completely lost their touch. When the magazine Maxim asked its readers what they felt when they saw women laughing, nearly a third thought the women were laughing at them. Not even with , mind you, but at. - Independent – 02.11.1997
The wrong side of flirty. Excessive political correctness is partly to blame, according to Kate Fox, social anthropologist at the Social Issues Research Centre, an independent think-tank based in Oxford, which analysed the Martini survey. "Flirting has had a bad press," she says. "I've spent the past few months researching the subject of male/ female interaction in academic journals, plus we have a social monitoring facility at the research centre, and these sources confirm the survey results." - Mail – 27.10.1997
The secret code to flirt your way into his heart 'The subtle differences in the way we glance at another person, meet their gaze and even the way we look away can make all the difference between a successful encounter and an uncomfortable one with an attractive stranger,' says Kate Fox. 'Learn to read his responses and you'll soon know whether he's worth approaching.' According to Fox, when you see someone you like the look of, direct eye contact is the best way to indicate interest. But there is a special technique . . . - Telegraph – 10.09.1997
The friendliest tribe in Britain. Racegoers are not like normal people; they tend to be more chivalrous, nicer and better behaved. They know how to shed their inhibitions without turning nasty, are always polite to women and are probably the last social grouping east of America where strangers are made to feel welcome. That, at least, is roughly what Kate Fox, director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, has discovered after examining them through socio-anthropological binoculars. - Indpendent 01.09.1997
Anthropologists discover friendly tribe called racegoers. "The Racing Tribe", a new study of racing and racegoers carried out by Kate Fox of The Social Issues Research Centre, describes racegoers as "the kind of friendly, tolerant, obliging natives that most anthropologists encounter only in their dreams." Having carried out a year of fieldwork at 22 meetings, the report concludes that racegoers show exceptional sociability, partly because of the diverse social base from which they are drawn. - Times – 01.09.1997
Natives friendly in racecourse jungle. When Kate Fox, an anthropologist and director of the Social Issues Research Centre at Oxford, went racing for the first time in 1995 she could not believe how racegoers behaved – and turned the beliefs of social scientists on their head. "Racegoers were not conforming to the laws of crowd behaviour. They were making eye contact and smiling at each other and striking up conversations with strangers, which normally just does not happen. Normally in a crowd people avoid making eye contact, whereas racegoers were behaving like a small, friendly tribe," she said.
