“Playing Hard to Get”: Understanding an Elusive Phenomenon
Walster, Walster, Piliavin & Schmidt (1973) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26(1)
Relied on in 2 places across the academy · 1 stated limit
What is contested about it
Playing hard to get is folk wisdom with an unusually clear paper trail: the authors ran five experiments that found nothing before a sixth found the effect, and only for a specific version of it. The popular claim is far broader than what held.
What it found
Five successive experiments failed to show that a uniformly hard-to-get person was valued more than an easy-to-get one.
The selectively hard-to-get person — easy for the subject, difficult for others — was preferred over uniformly hard-to-get, uniformly easy-to-get, and no-information alternatives.
What it does not show
1973, undergraduate samples, and framed throughout around men evaluating women. We take the direction of the result, not its cultural furniture.
Where we rely on it
2 places in the academy. If this paper turned out to be wrong, this is the list that would have to change.
Cited alongside it
Papers that sit under the same topics and films. Not a claim that they agree with each other — only that the same exercises lean on both.
Anticipation and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption
Loewenstein (1987)The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation
Loewenstein (1994)Research
A real study. We tell you what it found, how many people were in it, and what it can't prove.
Free to read, link to and quote. If we have carried this paper further than it goes, say so at contact@suaviq.com — corrections to this registry are the most useful mail we get.