According to psychologists, playing hard-to-get can be an effective technique for gaining and keeping

Authors Avatar

Information about the Literature-review Section

The idea of "playing hard to get", which I interpret as a style of flirting meant to increase the significance of the individual by increasing the effort in the "chase", has been only presented in a few studies. One study which was quite interesting and provided many new insights on this subject was conducted by Walster, Walster, Piliavin and Schmidt (1973), in their study they conducted five experiments, all of which failed! They had the same hypothesis as I proposed, that a woman who is hard to get to go out on a date would be more valued by a man, rather than a woman who is easy to get. This was not true due to the fact that men simply get frustrated with these types of women, and do not want to waste their time on a woman who does not show the same interest that they have in them. What they found instead was that men were highly attracted to a woman who was hard to get for other men, but easy to get for them. What I interpreted from their results was that when a woman shows interest in a particular man, he will reciprocate those feelings for her if he knows that she has other options, in terms of other potential romantic partners. This makes her more desirable for the man. Walster, Walster, and Berscheid (1971) showed in their results that the act of playing hard to get was not an effective strategy for increasing one’s status. My understanding of their results was that people like people who like them; this is simple and shouldn’t be complicated further by playing games such as hard to get. What is meant by playing games is ignoring the other person, trying to call them as minimal as possible, and basically showing little, if any interest at all. This merely pushes the other person away,

According to psychologists, playing hard-to-get can be an effective technique for gaining and keeping someone's attention; however, it should be played with caution and discretion.

Peter Ditto, an associate professor of psychology, says playing hard-to-get is like advertising.

"Advertisers use the same technique all the time," he says. "They'll say something like 'one time only' because they want people to think that if a product is harder to get, it must be a more rare commodity."

The best way for people to advertise themselves is to never make themselves too available, says Carrie Hoffman, a senior early childhood education major and McCauley's off-and-on girlfriend of two years.

"I would never just go up to somebody and say, 'I want your phone number,'" she said. "I don't care if he is Mr. G.Q. man  I just wouldn't do it."

Join now!

She says her mother always told her not to chase.

"I can still hear her voice ringing in my head, saying 'If he wants to talk to you, he'll call you,'" Hoffman adds.

If she actually does call a guy (usually McCauley), she waits as long as she can to do it. She doesn't want to seem like an "eager beaver."

McCauley uses the "keeping busy technique" to play the game.

When he knows that Hoffman might be calling or that he should be calling her, he often goes out with his friends or works on his cars.

"Being busy ...

This is a preview of the whole essay