Difficulty as a Determinant of Interpersonal Appeal: A Social-Motivational Application of Energization Theory

This experiment investigated the hypothesis, derived from energization theory, that a target person's interpersonal appeal should vary nonmonotonically with the difficulty of establishing a favorable relationship with her or him. Male subjects learned that it would be easy, difficult, or impossible to persuade a woman to choose them as a co-worker. As expected, those who believed it would be difficult to be selected appraised the woman more favorably than did those who believed it would be easy or impossible to be selected. The study also examined, and confirmed, the prediction that appraisals of the woman would be at least as favorable under conditions where the difficulty of persuading her was not known as under conditions where the difficulty of persuading her was high, but possible. Findings are discussed in terms of the perennial question of whether there is interpersonal advantage in making oneself hard-to-get.