Flowers still best way to a woman’s heart

London -  A bouquet of flowers can indeed have a powerful impact on romance, scientists have found.

Psychologists have discovered that the presence of flowers make women significantly more receptive to men’s advances, even when the flowers are in the background rather than  presented as a gift, the Telegraph reported.

The findings prove that flowers can play a major role on making love blossom, suggesting that the Bard was right all along.

A team of psychologists from the University of South Brittany in France found that young women shopping on their own are far more likely to give their phone number to a handsome young

man who approaches them if they are stopped outside a flower shop, rather than a cake shop or woman’s shoe shop.

The university recruited five young men who had been previously judged as being attractive by a group of women.

These men were then told to approach young women between the age of 18 and 25 in the street to try to get their phone numbers. Each man was told to say their name, tell the woman that  she was very pretty and ask for her phone number so that they could later go for a drink.

Of the 600 women approached, around a quarter – or 144 – agreed to give their number if they were asked for it outside a flower shop.

This compares to just one in seven – or 90 – outside a bakery, and one in ten outside a shoe shop.

The researchers said that the experiment shows that the site of flowers makes people more open to romance.

“Flowers reflect our emotions and moods. They often convey feelings of compassion, regret, merriment or even romance. The results confirm the effect of exposure to flowers on receptivity to romantic request,” the research found.

Dr Tom Buchanan, an expert in psychology at the University of Westminster, said that the sight of a certain object can lead people to behave in certain ways, even if they do not realise it.

He said that because flowers are associated with romance, people often start thinking, speaking or behaving in a romantic way when they see them.

“These findings are consistent with the phenomenon known as automatic or behavioural priming. That is where ‘cues’ – or triggers - in your environment can lead you to behave in ways that  are consistent with that environment.

“So the presence of the flower shop, which is associated with romance, could have primed people to behave in a way that is more receptive to the researcher’s advances,” Dr Buchanan  said.

The findings were published in The Journal of Social Psychology.