Women More Attracted to Men with Unclear Feelings

According to a new study published in Psychological Science, a woman is more attracted to a man when she's not sure how much he likes her. Haven't they done countless Sex and the City episodes on this topic?

The research was conducted on female undergrads, who believed the experiment was designed to study whether Facebook could work as an online dating site. (Not that FB isn't already kind of an online dating site... creeping on someone's profile is practically the new first base.) Each study participant was told that male students from two other universities had viewed her profile, as well as the profiles of 15 to 20 other females. Each was then shown the Facebook profiles of four men who they thought were real, but who were actually fictitious.

The researchers told the participants different things about those four men: the first group was told that the four men were the ones who liked them most, the second group that those four men rated them above average, and the third group that those men were either the ones who liked them most or the ones who liked them about average (making the third group all sorts of confused).

Consistent with past findings, the researchers found that women were more attracted to men who they believed liked them a lot than women who thought the men only liked them an average amount. (It's like being in the 6th grade again!) This study found, however, that the women who found the men most attractive were those who weren't sure whether those men were into them or not.

The study's authors sum up their findings, which sound more like something out of Cosmo than a science journal... "When people first meet, it may be that popular dating advice is correct: Keeping people in the dark about how much we like them will increase how much they think about us and will pique their interest."

We may still have to continue playing games, after all; just please, ladies, lets not get started on that Rules shit again.

Source:
Association for Psychological Science (2011, February 7). 'He loves me, he loves me not...': Women are more attracted to men whose feelings are unclear. EurekAlert! Retrieved from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-02/afps-lm020711.php