TY - JOUR AU - Schmidt, Lynn AB - 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. (15 ref.) TI - \"Playing hard to get\": Understanding an elusive phenomenon JF - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology DO - 10.1037/h0034234 DA - 1973-04-01 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/american-psychological-association/playing-hard-to-get-understanding-an-elusive-phenomenon-M46L6jaeOA SP - 113 EP - 121 VL - 26 IS - 1 DP - DeepDyve ER -