The culture behind playing hard to get
...ryone is different and the rules will be different for each couple. Some individuals are more tolerant and will not get frustrated when someone acts unavailable and will in fact enjoy the chase. Whereas others could lose interest if someone plays too hard to get. Therefore suggesting that this cultural phenomenon is a process which is mutually agreed by the individuals involved and can change at any time. The view that this concept is transmitted would be assuming that everybody is the same and would eliminate individual differences which are very important aspects of society. The web article (Does it work to play hard to get? n.d.) stated that “we want what we can’t have, it’s a part of how we are programmed”. I find the idea of being programmed to want what we cannot have questionable. New born babies seek attention from the easiest available source to them, usually the mother. If the idea of wanting what we cannot have was programmed into us, then surly infants would not be interested in easily accessible things, but would seek attention and comfort from sources which were not readily available to them. This suggests that babies are not born with the concepts of ‘playing hard to get’ and ‘wanting what they cannot have’, and therefore these concepts must be created and influenced by other people and aspects of the environment. Carrithers (1992) believes that individuals are only understood in relationships with other individuals, and that when culture arrives, it is “built on an already extant scaffolding, and indeed it is still intimately concerned with relationships and other individuals” (Carrither, 1992, p.56). This idea by Carrithers supports the earlier idea of culture being a process developed by more than person and not simply a package handed to an individual. The already existing scaffolding is the innate communication skills that babies are born with, e.g. crying to attract mothers attention, imitating movements and expressions. These basic communication skills are built upon through experiences and others reactions to their behaviour, to form more complex social engagements and concepts, in this case the concept of ‘wanting what we cannot have’. Lorenz’s idea of imprinting provides further support for the idea of culture being created and not simply programmed into us or handed to us. Hess (1962) defined imprinting as “the primary formation of social bonds in infant animals” (p.351). It is a type of learning process where animals (particularly birds) become attached to the first moving object they see, usually the mother. Lorenz was able to condition chicks to become attached to toy trains, balloons and various other objects. Similarly to the idea addressed earlier about infants seeking attention, imprinting shows that animals engage with the very first thing that they see, clearly suggesting that the concepts of ‘wanting what you cant have’ and ‘playing hard to get’ are not innate and programmed into people or animals. You could question this idea by suggesting that these concepts only exist in humans and not animals. However certain animals mating rituals clearly demonstrate the presents of the concepts in animals. An example of the “Copycat Effect” (Maier, 1998) in animal mating is that male sailfin mollies are more attractive to females if they have been observed mating with Amazon mollies. The explanation Maier gave for this is that females tend to chose males that have mated successfully with other females. “By using information about fitness gathered by others, an individual may save herself time and effort in making assessments” (Maier, 1998, p.204). Perhaps this could apply to humans too? I believe that both males and females seek partners who look fit and healthy in order to produce healthy offspring and successfully pass on their genes. Maybe the reason that individuals are more interested in others who are not easily accessible to them and may be more drawn more to someone who attracts lots of attention from other males/females for the same reason in which animals are; to save themselves time and effort in making assessments of that individual themselves. On the other hand, maybe the male sailfin mollies were more attracted to females which they had seen mating with other males because they too, like humans, enjoy the chase and are more attracted to someone who appears to be unavailable. In some species, the female runs away from the male in order to be chased before she will allow him to mate with her. These factors suggests that perhaps ‘wanting what we can’t have’ is in fact a universal phenomenon not only present in humans. There is particular evidence supporting the view that it is a universal phenomenon that seeming unavailable is more appealing, dating back as early as the late eleventh century. Courtly love is an “extravagantly artificial and stylised relationship- a forbidden affair” (Simpson, 1998). It was practised by noble lords and ladies outside of a marriage. The lady had to be higher born, and her marriage to a knight made her inferior to the man. Courtly lovers were pledged to strict secrecy and the lady was wooed according to elaborate conventions of etiquette. This type of love was so appealing because it offered an escape from the dull routines of noble marriage. This provides strong evidence that even in the late ele...