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You're a smart, attractive person, so you wouldn't be surprised if one of your friends got the hots for you and then started acting all kinds of crazy. Your love-struck friend will wonder if you feel the same way, and will probably dream up subtle tests to find out. They could save themselves some effort by quickly surveying the scientific literature, though, because they will almost certainly be following one of seven well-trodden paths. In a classic study led by Leslie Baxter at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and William Wilmot at the University of Montana, Missoula, a team of researchers interviewed 90 undergraduate students about their relationships with people of the opposite sex. The interviewees admitted to a total of 158 "calculated acquisition strategies" or secret tests that they hoped would reveal how a fancied friend felt about them. Many of the tests were pretty similar, so Baxter and Wilmot were able to boil them down to just seven categories. Read on to see how infuriating, and downright calculating, friends can become in the pursuit of a relationship upgrade. 1. Endurance This is most common type of test. In this category, the love-struck friend does their best to test the other person's feelings by fishing for compliments or demanding help 每 especially if it comes at a cost to the other. A classic endurance gambit is the self-put-down. As one respondent recalled: "He was really getting down on himself, saying he wasn't a very capable or nice person. He said it to get me to compliment him and verbalise how much I thought of him." | 
