Why do people "play hard to get"?

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I totally agree. This brings me back to something I have thought about for years but I know will never come to pass... I've always wanted to engineer an experiment where a of team newborn human infants are somehow raised completely isolated from human contact. I want to see what kind of a social structure they form on their own with no outside influence. This is, of course, impossible since they aren't self-sufficent and even if you tried to care for them with robots, they'd likely just grow up imitating the robots. Plus no one would ever let me do it but it would be soooo fascinating.

I would be extremely interested to find out the form of communication (language?) they develop as well as general social interaction like eye contact and facial expressions. Not to mention gender roles and mating rituals.

I think you'd have to have several groups, one of each genetic background and one mixed to see if genes have anything to do with it (for example if caucasians have evolved to desire more eye contact than asians genetically, ect). Possibly explain a great many things about nature vrs nurture.

I like the way you think.

There are scientific papers on mating and modesty that bring up this very subject.

I don't go for it either. If someone puts up "resistance", I drop it. I'm not a begger and don't want to beg for things and I'm polite and don't want to keep annoying someone. If I show interest in someone and they're interested in me in return but decide to play hard to get, it's their loss.

This has already happened. A couple of kings tried it as an intentional experiment to find out what was the default language of humans. One was Egyptian and assumed it would be Egyptian. One was European (not sure which country). In these cases, they had caregivers raise the babies silently but otherwise normally. Language development was not as expected (each king had expected their own language would be the default) but otherwise things seemed ok. Since the kings only ordered silence, rather than isolation, this was only partly your experiment. These babies were actually quite lucky compared to the babies raised in actual isolation....

....the babies raised in actual isolation were Romanian orphans of the 90's. It wasn't an intentional experiment but rather was the result of catastrophic understaffing in the orphanages. Too many babies, not enough caregivers, no time to do anything for each one but feed them and change them. The only human interaction they had was each other. Babies can't really interact with each other beyond crying when another cries. The result was Reactive Attachment Disorder. Human babies really do need human interaction (from somebody old enough to interact) to develop healthily. At least the babies raised in silence by royal orders got human interaction so only language was affected.

This is why the experiment can never tuly happen. They would have to somehow grow up being normal but not influenced by any culture. Humans are copy-cats so I imagine the babies raised in silence probably just didn't think verbal communication was very important since no one had ever taught them that. And they really can't develop normally at all without adult interaction. Hence the conundrum.

It isn't possible for them to be what I would like them to be for the purposes of observation so therefore it isn't possible to see what humans are like without culture. I guess the conclusion is: They aren't.

I think the case of "Genie" might be pertinent to your discussion Janissy and myth. It's a really interesting case. I remember seeing something on TV recently, a show about brain development, that said Genie was never able to grasp some aspects of language grammar because she was unexposed at a critical time in brain development. Apparently there are some points in development where if something is not learned it will never be mastered. interesting discussion, though. This kind of stuff fascinates me.

But back to the original topic. At the risk of repeating something someone has already said, how the hell are you supposed to know if someone is just playing hard to get or is really not interested?

Oops link:
http://www.mymultiplesclerosis.co.uk/mi ... child.html

Thanks, Aimless, that is an interesting story. I suppose that means that a group of babies wouldn't develop any language at all on their own. Wow, the more I learn, the more I am convinced that humans are terribly fragile creatures. They can't function outside of their norms, they're just incapable of it. I wonder if that in turn relates to the original premise and indicates that "hard to get" serves some sort of function other than purely cultural. Since cultural apparently also somewhat equals required behavior for normal development.

Sadly, Genie was placed in a foster home where she was abused. She lives in an adult care facility now. Apparently she is naturally bright, it just goes to show you the damage done when a child is neglected and abused.

The "yes than no" game is a socially comfortable way to say no.

The "no than yes" game is the topic we are talking about. The only way to find out, really, is to gently keep up light contact. Light contact with a lot of people who say "no" is eventually going to garner at least one "yes." At which point heavy emotional contact is a typical mistake. Lightness is key. And more lightness is appropriate when welcomed.