"selective elusiveness"
Feb. 20th, 2003 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chestnutcurlsWhere is everyone today?
This week I have read two great books: Messy Spirituality by Michael Yaconelli and The Friendship Factor by Alan McGinnis. I highly recommend both of them. This passage from The Friendship Factor was very interesting to me, so I wanted to share it with you guys.
According to folklore, the woman who is hard to get is a more desirable catch than the woman who is overly eager for alliance...But Dr. Elaine Walster and other researchers tell in Psychology Today about an experiment with several hundred college men to determine their reaction to various women. When interviewed initially, the men said they preferred the hard-to-get woman because she could be choosy only if she were popular. And a woman is popular for some good reason. They said such women are usually more personable, pretty, and sexy- a combination that is hard to beat. They were intrigued by the challenge of the distant woman.
On the other hand, college men said that easy women spelled trouble. They were usually desperate for dates, and when they did get a man they became too serious, too dependent, and too demanding. In short, nearly all men interviewed agreed with the researcher's premise that it is smart for a woman to play it cool.
But the data broke down when the men were interviewed about their first dates, set up by computer, with women who were actually confederates of the experimenters. With half the men, the women were instructed to be aloof and elusive. With the other half, the confederates played easy to get and were friendly and affectionate almost immediately. The researchers had predicted that the women most in demand for a second date would be those who were choosy and proved to be a challenge. But just the opposite was true. The more romantic interest the girl displayed, the more desirable the male students judged her to be. Apparently all the world does love a lover.
So back to the drawing board. The psychologists by this time were totally exasperated, so they scrapped their earlier hypotheses and returned to interviewing college men. This time they examined the men more carefully and asked them to tell about the advantages and disadvantages of the hard-to-get and easy-to-get women....Now came the conclusions from the study. The researchers discovered that if a woman has a reputation for being hard to get, but for some reason is easy for the subject to get, she is highly appealing. Such a woman is dynamite for a man because she has the high appeal of being a woman who is selective in the man she cares for, but when she meets a man she likes, she does not hold back in declaring her feelings. Hence his dates with her are highly rewarding and enjoyable. The advice of the researchers, then, is this: Be selectively elusive. If you embody the popularity and desirability of the distant woman, but reach out with friendliness and warmth when you care for a man, you'll be a winner.
This week I have read two great books: Messy Spirituality by Michael Yaconelli and The Friendship Factor by Alan McGinnis. I highly recommend both of them. This passage from The Friendship Factor was very interesting to me, so I wanted to share it with you guys.
According to folklore, the woman who is hard to get is a more desirable catch than the woman who is overly eager for alliance...But Dr. Elaine Walster and other researchers tell in Psychology Today about an experiment with several hundred college men to determine their reaction to various women. When interviewed initially, the men said they preferred the hard-to-get woman because she could be choosy only if she were popular. And a woman is popular for some good reason. They said such women are usually more personable, pretty, and sexy- a combination that is hard to beat. They were intrigued by the challenge of the distant woman.
On the other hand, college men said that easy women spelled trouble. They were usually desperate for dates, and when they did get a man they became too serious, too dependent, and too demanding. In short, nearly all men interviewed agreed with the researcher's premise that it is smart for a woman to play it cool.
But the data broke down when the men were interviewed about their first dates, set up by computer, with women who were actually confederates of the experimenters. With half the men, the women were instructed to be aloof and elusive. With the other half, the confederates played easy to get and were friendly and affectionate almost immediately. The researchers had predicted that the women most in demand for a second date would be those who were choosy and proved to be a challenge. But just the opposite was true. The more romantic interest the girl displayed, the more desirable the male students judged her to be. Apparently all the world does love a lover.
So back to the drawing board. The psychologists by this time were totally exasperated, so they scrapped their earlier hypotheses and returned to interviewing college men. This time they examined the men more carefully and asked them to tell about the advantages and disadvantages of the hard-to-get and easy-to-get women....Now came the conclusions from the study. The researchers discovered that if a woman has a reputation for being hard to get, but for some reason is easy for the subject to get, she is highly appealing. Such a woman is dynamite for a man because she has the high appeal of being a woman who is selective in the man she cares for, but when she meets a man she likes, she does not hold back in declaring her feelings. Hence his dates with her are highly rewarding and enjoyable. The advice of the researchers, then, is this: Be selectively elusive. If you embody the popularity and desirability of the distant woman, but reach out with friendliness and warmth when you care for a man, you'll be a winner.
