"Playing hard to get": Understanding an elusive phenomenon

Abstract

Conducted 5 experiments testing the folklore that the woman who is hard to get is a more desirable catch than the woman who is too eager for an alliance. All 5 experiments failed. In Exp. VI with 71 male university summer students an understanding was gained of this elusive phenomenon. 2 components were proposed as contributing to a woman’s desirability: (a) how hard the woman is for the S to get, and (b) how hard she is for other men to get. It was predicted that the selectively hard-to-get woman (i.e. a woman who is easy for the S to get but hard for all other men to get) would be preferred to either a uniformly hard-to-get woman, a uniformly easy-to-get woman, or a woman about whom the S had no information. This hypothesis received strong support. Men ascribed to the selective woman all of the assets of uniformly hard-to-get and the uniformly easy-to-get women and none of their liabilities.