According to a study involving 300 heterosexual adults, only one in three men and one in five women can accurately detect when someone of the opposite sex is flirting with them, with the vast majority of both men and women instead misperceiving mere friendliness as another's romantic advances. This was the case both for the actual participants, 104 paired college students, and for the 250 others who observed the interactions.

Do you think these statistics would look drastically different if the participants were a different age group -- for example 30-40 years old?

Thanks for the comment. For this study, I presume the 250 observers were not, at least exclusively, college students. The article specificed the 52 pairs as students, but refered to the observers as "people," suggesting they could not be so categorized. Unfortunately, I cannot access the full study without paying, and so cannot know for certain.

While I'd definitely imagine a generational disconnect if each age group was made to observe college students, it'd be interesting to see whether a similar inability to detect flirting persisted for every age group when they observed members with their same age group.

How would you see age factoring?