Hard-to-Get Phenomenon

Laboratory Experiments

In 1973, Elaine Hatfield (formerly Walster) and her colleagues published a series of six experiments designed to test the hypothesis that hard-to-get women are more romantically desirable to men than are easy-to-get women. The first five experiments uniformly failed to provide any evidence in support of the notion that hard-to-get women are more attractive than easy-to-get women. In one study, for example, women who initially declined a date with a man before eventually accepting it were no more or less desirable to [Page 789]the man than women who eagerly accepted the date right away. After these five failures, Walster and colleagues went back to the drawing board and recognized that there are actually two distinct ways in which a man can think of a woman as being hard to get: (1) how hard it is for me to get her and (2) how hard it is for other men to get her. The scholars hypothesized that men would be most attracted to the woman who is selectively hard to get—easy for them to get but hard for other men to get.

In a sixth study, college-aged men evaluated the desirability of five college-aged women who had ostensibly matched with them through a dating service. (In reality, these women's profiles were created by the researchers.) The experimenter explained that three of the five women had previously attended a session in which they had completed five “date selection forms,” one for each of their five male matches. For each of these three women, the participant saw that one form included ratings of himself and the other four forms included ratings of fictitious men. One of these women was uniformly hard to get, rating all five of her matches as not especially appealing. One was uniformly easy to get, rating all five of her matches as highly appealing. And one was selectively hard to get, rating the other four men as unappealing but rating the male participant as highly appealing.

The men exhibited an overwhelming preference for the selectively hard-to-get woman. She was the top choice of 59 percent of them, with each of the other four women (including the two who ostensibly had not yet completed their date selection forms) winning top-choice honors from only 7 to 15 percent. The men viewed this woman as having all of the advantages of her competitors, but none of their liabilities. For example, they perceived her as being just as popular as the uniformly hard-to-get women (while being less cold) and just as friendly as the uniformly easy-to-get woman (while being more popular). Subsequent research including both men and women participants revealed a second reason why selectively hard-to-get individuals are so desirable: Being liked by such individuals raises one's self-esteem.

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