Lexicon ·
play hard to get
verb phrase, also noun (playing hard to get)
- Stated meaning
- Pretending to be less interested or available than you are, so that the other person wants you more.
- Operating meaning
- A shortage manufactured by the holder of the supply, priced on the assumption that the buyer cannot tell scarcity from refusal.
- Origin
- An American idiom, dated to the mid-1900s by The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary. Social psychology tested it as folklore in 1973.
The American Heritage idioms dictionary, on Dictionary.com (opens in a new window), dates the phrase to the mid-1900s: “Pretend to be inaccessible or uninterested; act coy, especially with the opposite sex.” Merriam-Webster (opens in a new window) states the purpose, which is to pretend disinterest “in order to make that person more attracted to one.”
In 1973 4 social psychologists (opens in a new window) set out to test “the folklore that the woman who is hard to get is a more desirable catch.” Their abstract reports the result in 4 words: “All 5 experiments failed.” A sixth, with 71 men, found a preference for the “selectively hard-to-get” woman, easy for the subject to get and hard for every other man, who was credited with “all of the assets” of both approaches “and none of their liabilities.” Later work kept the folklore and added conditions. A 2013 paper (opens in a new window) defined the tactic as people appearing “ostensibly uninterested to get others to desire them more” and ran 5 studies on it, the largest with 491 participants. A 2014 paper (opens in a new window) found that it raised wanting and lowered liking, and only where the pursuer was already committed. Otherwise it “will decrease both wanting and liking.”
Under load, the tactic manufactures a shortage at the point of supply. The holder withholds what is in stock, and the price holds only while the buyer believes the stock is low. The 1973 data found it profitable only when it was selective: scarce to everyone else and available to the buyer, a discount presented as exclusivity. When both parties play, each reads the other’s withholding as a genuine shortage, and the market closes the period with no transactions and 2 parties each certain they were the scarcer one.