What a fascinating study.. Science has actually backed up the “playing hard to get” phrase. Now I’m not advocating you play any games when dating, but this study does reveal that if a man holds back his true feelings a little at the beginning then a woman is bound to be more interested.
A recent study found that women were actually more attracted to men if they didn’t know for sure if the men liked them best than men who they knew liked them the most. Who would’ve thought that keeping someone guessing about your feelings for them might actaully make them think more about you?
Researchers said this came down to the fact that salient information is what massively influences our way of reading our feelings. Salient information is things you think about all the time, you know, that whole “I just can’t get him out of my head” thing. The uncertainty about whether the man was interested or not kept the women guessing about if the man liked them a lot or not. We interpret these frequent thoughts as an indication that we must like him a lot. Uncertainty interests us because we can’t adapt to it and we don’t know what the outcome will be.
Here’s a quote from Psychology today that explains how the Uncertainty Principle works so well with us humans,
“Prior studies have shown that uncertainty about a positive event often can produce more positive feelings than if the positive event was certain. When the positive event is certain, we experience strong positive feelings, but then we adapt to it. However, when the event is uncertain we spend more time thinking about if the event will occur, trying to interpret it and understand it. The result is that we are unable to adapt to the event because the outcome is undetermined. This could be another reason why uncertainty makes us more interested in something or someone.”
So there you have it guys! Science has just proved that when you first start to date someone, not showing all of your feelings at the very beginning, and thus creating a tad of uncertainty about how much you like her, will make her think more about you. This means she will like you more.
Please keep in mind that this study only focusses on the very beginning of a relationship, when a man and a woman first meet. There’s no proof saying that playing hard to get throughout a relationship works or helps!
