The Slow Reveal

Five failed experiments

In 1973 Walster, Walster, Piliavin and Schmidt tried to prove the oldest piece of dating advice: that a person who is hard to get is more attractive.

They ran five experiments, and all five failed. Being difficult, distant or slow to reply with everyone did not make anyone more wanted. The effect was not there.

The advice survived anyway. It is one of the most repeated claims in dating advice, and it failed all five times it was tested.

What to do

Stop using a method that failed

Replying late, acting cool and pretending to be busy are exactly what the myth tells you to do. They are also exactly what was tested, and they did nothing.

Five experiments in a row failed to show that a person who is hard to get with everyone is valued more than a person who is easy to get.

Limits of the study: The study is from 1973, used university students, and was written about men judging women. We trust the direction of the result, not its cultural assumptions.

The sixth experiment

The sixth experiment separated two things that the first five had mixed up: how hard someone is for you to get, and how hard they are for everyone else to get.

The most attractive person was easy for the participant to get and hard for everybody else. She was preferred over the person who was hard for everyone, the person who was easy for everyone, and a person about whom nothing was known.

So the cause was never a shortage of warmth. It was being selective. People want to be chosen by someone who does not choose easily.

What to do

Be selective, not distant

Being selective is about who gets your attention. It is not about giving less attention to the person you have chosen. A full life makes you less available to the world in general. It gives you no reason to be less warm to the person in front of you.

The person who was easy for the participant to get but hard for others was preferred over people who were hard for everyone, easy for everyone, or unknown.

Step 1: Never make them guess

In the version of the experiment that won, the other person's interest was completely clear. Nothing in the finding rewards being unclear with the person you actually want.

This is where most people get it wrong. They hear the advice to be harder to get, and they make the other person unsure. Uncertainty is the one thing the research never found to help.

What to do

Make your interest obvious, and take your time

Let them know you are interested. Then let things move slowly. These two things do not conflict. The myth exists because people assume they do.

This is our interpretation of the 1973 study: clear interest is what makes it work. The experiment changed how available the person was, not how warm she was, so it cannot tell us what happens when warmth is taken away.

Step 2: Save something for next time

Loewenstein describes curiosity as a gap between what someone knows and what they want to know. A gap pulls people in. A complete account does not.

This changes what mystery means. Mystery is not hiding things. It is telling things in order. You are not holding a part back. You are saving it for the next time you meet.

In practice this is simple. Do not tell your whole life story, every opinion and all your emotional history on the first evening. This is not a tactic. There is simply no reason to tell it all at once.

What to do

Leave one thing unfinished

End an evening with something clearly left unsaid, such as a story you started or a place you mentioned but did not describe. Then the next meeting already has something to begin with.

Loewenstein's theory says that curiosity begins when you notice a gap in what you know, and grows as the gap becomes more obvious.

Limits of the study: This is a review of theory, not an experiment about dating. Applying it to how you pace a conversation is our own step.

Step 3: Let them look forward to it

Loewenstein asked people how much they would pay for a kiss from their favorite film star, given after different delays. Standard economics says people pay less the longer they must wait.

The opposite happened. People valued a kiss in three days more than the same kiss right now. The waiting was not a cost. It was part of what they were paying for.

He called this savoring. The waiting itself gave people pleasure, and they paid to have it.

What to do

Give them something to look forward to

End the evening at its best moment and name the next one: a day and a place. The time in between is not empty. It is the part they enjoy in advance.

People were willing to pay more for a pleasant event when it was delayed. This contradicts the standard view and suggests that looking forward to something has a value of its own.

Limits of the study: These were imagined prices in a pricing study, not a real-world experiment on dating. It shows that savoring is real. It does not tell you the best number of days to wait.

The rule

Everything above depends on one condition that is easy to miss. In the kiss study, the kiss was guaranteed. People were pricing a certain event at different delays.

Take away the certainty and you are no longer offering something to look forward to. You are offering doubt, and doubt is what the five failed experiments tested.

The two feel similar to the person doing them, but they have opposite effects. Looking forward to something is what two people build together. Uncertainty is what one person does to another.

What to do

This lesson in a few sentences

They should always know that you want to see them again. They do not always need to know exactly when. If they are unsure that you want to see them, you are not pacing things. You are making someone anxious and calling it a strategy.

This is our interpretation: certainty is the condition everything depends on. It follows from the design of the studies. Loewenstein priced guaranteed events at different delays, and the 1973 failures are the closest thing we have to a test of deliberately created doubt.

Anything that works by making someone anxious is not part of this lesson. Ignoring messages as a tactic, cancelling to seem busy, and going quiet to get a reaction are the behaviors the 1973 experiments tested, and they failed. They are also unkind, which is the better reason not to do them.

You become truly less available by having a full life, not by keeping a schedule of delays. If you manage your reply times, you are not less available. You are pretending to be, and people usually notice in the end.

Here is the honest limit of the evidence. This lesson rests on a 1973 study of university students and a 1987 pricing study that used imaginary money. Both are well known and both point the same way, but neither one tested real dates.