Case Study 22.2: Playing Hard to Get — What the Research Actually Shows

Case Study 22.2: Playing Hard to Get — What the Research Actually Shows

The Folk Theory

Few pieces of popular courtship wisdom are as universally recognized as "playing hard to get" — the idea that manufactured inaccessibility, strategic indifference, and withheld availability make a person more desirable. The logic is intuitive: rare goods are prized, easily available ones are not; pursuing what retreats is a deeper behavioral impulse than pursuing what holds still. The folk theory predicts that deliberate performance of disinterest will increase attraction.

The research evidence, accumulated over decades, tells a considerably more complicated story.

The Early Studies: Partial Support

Elaine Hatfield (then Walster) and colleagues conducted what became the earliest systematic studies on hard-to-get strategies in the 1970s. Their initial expectation was straightforward confirmation of the folk theory. The results were not straightforward at all.

In one study, men rated women described as hard-to-get with other men but selectively available to them as most desirable — significantly more so than women who were uniformly easy to get or uniformly hard to get. The critical variable was selective inaccessibility: the woman who was hard for everyone else to get, but had clearly chosen this particular man, was most attractive. This is a finding that partially confirms the folk theory (inaccessibility matters) but substantially qualifies it (it must be specifically resolved in the observer's favor to be attractive).

What about uniformly hard-to-get targets? Uniformly hard-to-get women — those who did not seem available or interested in anyone — were rated lower in attractiveness than easy-to-get women on several measures, including likelihood of dating success and perceived liking for the man evaluating them. Universal inaccessibility read as either disinterest, hostility, or arrogance, not as exciting challenge.

The Reactance Account

Brehm's reactance theory offers a mechanism for the selective version of hard-to-get attraction. When a person perceives that their freedom of choice is threatened — that something they might want is being restricted — reactance increases desire for the restricted object. The person who is hard to get represents restricted access; pursuing them engages a freedom-restoration motivation. This is why rejection can, counterintuitively, intensify short-term desire: being told "no" by someone you wanted says that you cannot have them, which triggers reactance.

But reactance is acute and short-lived. Research on reactance effects finds that they diminish rapidly when the person concludes the restriction is insuperable (the object is simply unavailable) or when alternative desirable options become salient. The hard-to-get strategy that works on reactance is working on a short-term arousal effect that can be mistaken for, but is distinct from, genuine romantic interest.

The Costs Problem

Even where playing hard to get increases some measures of attractiveness, the strategy consistently incurs costs that are less visible in simple attraction ratings. A meta-analysis by Jonason and Li (2013), examining the literature on strategic disinterest in courtship, found that:

Targets who played hard to get were rated as significantly less warm and likeable than available targets, even when they were rated as more desirable as partners.
Playing hard to get decreased perceived interest and care for the other person, which predicted lower long-term satisfaction when relationships did form.
The strategy more reliably increased short-term pursuit motivation than long-term relational desire — consistent with the reactance account.

In other words: manufacturing inaccessibility can sometimes get you a second message or a second date. It does not reliably build the foundation for a genuinely satisfying relationship, partly because the relationship that forms is built on a performed version of the person rather than an authentic one.

Gender and the Hard-to-Get Asymmetry

Research on gender differences in hard-to-get effects has found complex patterns. Early studies focused almost exclusively on women playing hard to get toward men, reflecting the courtship scripts of the era. More recent work has examined the strategy across gender combinations with less uniform results.

A study by Dai and colleagues found that men playing hard to get toward women produced less consistent attraction effects than women playing hard to get toward men — possibly reflecting different scripts about courtship initiation and different interpretations of male reticence (which may be read as disinterest rather than selective availability). Nonbinary and same-sex courtship dynamics have been underresearched in this specific context.

What the gendered research consistently suggests is that the effects of strategic inaccessibility depend heavily on how the inaccessibility is read: as selective choosiness (positive), as disinterest in the observer specifically (negative), or as arrogance (negative). The interpretation is not under the control of the person deploying the strategy.

What the Research Actually Shows

Pulling together the evidence:

Uniform inaccessibility is not reliably attractive. The person who is equally unavailable to everyone is not typically read as highly desirable — they are read as uninterested or cold.
Selective inaccessibility can increase attraction — when the other person perceives that you are hard to get generally but specifically interested in them. This is a very narrow and difficult-to-control condition.
The mechanism is arousal-based, not intimacy-based. Reactance and Zeigarnik preoccupation produce psychological activation that feels like interest but is a distinct construct.
The strategy has consistent costs in perceived warmth and relational quality that attraction ratings tend to obscure.
Naturally occurring uncertainty — the authentic ambiguity of early connection, where neither person yet knows if the other is interested — produces many of the same arousal effects without the costs of deliberate deception.

The research does not support playing hard to get as a reliable, generalizable strategy. It suggests that the appeal of the strategy is real but works through mechanisms that are poorly suited for what most people say they want — a genuine, intimate connection with another person who is authentically present.

Discussion Questions

The research distinguishes between uniformly hard-to-get and selectively hard-to-get targets. Why is this distinction psychologically important? What does it tell us about the mechanism underlying the effect?
Hatfield's original studies showed that inaccessibility increased pursuit motivation but not necessarily liking. What does this distinction reveal about the relationship between desire and attraction?
The case study argues that "natural uncertainty" in early courtship produces similar psychological effects to manufactured hard-to-get behavior without the relational costs. Is this a morally relevant distinction, or is it just a pragmatic one?
If playing hard to get works primarily through reactance and Zeigarnik preoccupation — mechanisms that are distinct from genuine affection — what does this suggest about the kinds of relationships that form under these conditions?