The protocol of dating in the '90s. by Jean Tarbett photo illustration by Tanya Ackerman

"Smile at him, but don't talk to him first." "Don't be too nice and definitely don't ask for his number." "If he asks you out, say you're too busy this weekend. Say, 'Maybe next weekend.'" "And, for the love of God, stop drinking before you ruin everything."

It happens all the time. You see them stroll through the door, giggling and chatting. They seem so sweet. So carefree. But then the door closes behind them, shutting out the deafening music and the clouds of smoky air. And suddenly, they are transformed. They become devilish scheme-sters. And there, under the fluorescent lights, plans for their top-secret operation start to unfold. "Smile at him, but don't talk to him first." "Don't be too nice and definitely don't ask for his number." "If he asks you out, say you're too busy this weekend. Say, 'Maybe next weekend.'" "And, for the love of God, stop drinking before you ruin everything." Five minutes later, the Ladies Room door swings open again. They emerge with powdered noses and touched-up lipstick, ready to launch their attack on the opposition. But the opposition is always ready. They know about the game. "We know they sit in there and pick each other's brains to see what they can do to toy with the poor boys outside," says Kirk McCauley, a senior operations management major. "When someone plays hard-to-get with me, I just play it back." It's a two-way street, he says. According to psychologists, playing hard-to-get can be an effective technique for gaining and keeping someone's attention; however, it should be played with caution and discretion. Peter Ditto, an associate professor of psychology, says playing hard-to-get is like advertising. "Advertisers use the same technique all the time," he says. "They'll say something like 'one time only' because they want people to think that if a product is harder to get, it must be a more rare commodity." The best way for people to advertise themselves is to never make themselves too available, says Carrie Hoffman, a senior early childhood education major and McCauley's off-and-on girlfriend of two years. "I would never just go up to somebody and say, 'I want your phone number,'" she said. "I don't care if he is Mr. G.Q. man ­ I just wouldn't do it." She says her mother always told her not to chase. "I can still hear her voice ringing in my head, saying 'If he wants to talk to you, he'll call you,'" Hoffman adds. If she actually does call a guy (usually McCauley), she waits as long as she can to do it. She doesn't want to seem like an "eager beaver." McCauley uses the "keeping busy technique" to play the game. When he knows that Hoffman might be calling or that he should be calling her, he often goes out with his friends or works on his cars. "Being busy is the best way to play the game," he says. "If you know a lot of people and have a lot of things to do, you can always come up with something." But why do they go through all the trouble of coming up with schemes and holding back their true feelings? Some say it's a good way for each of them to measure how much the other is still interested. "Playing hard-to-get can be described as a game with the purpose of uncovering what the other person has to offer," says Adam Hill, a teaching fellow in the Counseling and Human Development Center. And if someone is not very interested in the other, research shows that playing the game can change his or her mind, Ditto points out. "There's something called the reactance theory," he explains. "And it says that when people think they can't have something, they want it even more." He adds that when people put a lot of effort into doing something, they tend to think up some sort of justification so they know it was worth it. "That's the cognitive dissonance theory," Ditto says. "It explains that when people work hard for something, they don't want to think that they did it all for nothing." Yes, the game can work, Ditto says. But it usually only tends to work for the short term. "It can help spark initial attraction," he says. "But I think it's ultimately ineffective for a long-term relationship." Playing the game might be OK at first, but it shouldn't last very long, says junior nursing major Jennifer Mowery. "Once you're comfortable with the person and you can start building on your relationship, it's time for the whole challenge deal to be over with," she says. Jennifer Paskey, a senior secondary education major, says when she and her boyfriend, Rich, starting dating 2 1/2 years ago, she played a little of the hard-to-get game. "I acted like I wasn't as excited as I really was when he called," she says. "I didn't push him aside, but I didn't want to act like I was dropping everything for him." After they had been dating a while and were comfortable with each other, Paskey asked him what he thought when she did that. "He said he thought it was kind of rude, but he could look past it," she says. "Now, I don't think it should be done, either. I think you should just be yourself." She says she thinks playing hard-to-get can be a bit deceptive. But not everyone thinks so. Senior business major Kim Wanski said she likes to play the game with her boyfriend, Todd. "You have to keep a bit of mystery in the relationship," she says. "Otherwise, people might take each other for granted, and it gets boring." McCauley says he and Hoffman play the game all the time, not to be deceptive, but just to keep the relationship exciting. "It's like a necessary evil that's essential to the relationship," he says. "I don't enjoy playing the game or get any thrills out of it, but when we aren't challenged by each other, things can go downhill overnight." Hoffman agrees. She says she and McCauley are the type of people who can't bear the thought of getting into a routine. "We have to keep that element of surprise and guessing there," she says. "Kirk and I never get bored with each other because there's always a challenge there." So they always wait a while before they call each other back and make sure that they're not too accessible for each other. Of course, they have been dating OFF-AND-ON for two years now. But many people play hard-to-get when they first meet someone, and they don't know if the person is interested at all. That's when they have to be careful, Hill says. "It's safe to say that playing hard-to-get works, but be careful about what it works at doing," he advises. "It may work at pissing off the person you're trying to attract." Mowery says the plan has backfired on her in the past. "It works sometimes," she says. "But sometimes, the guy just thinks, 'Oh screw her! She doesn't like me.'" There has to be some indication that the person is interested for the game to work, Ditto says. "You need to have some basis of attraction before playing hard-to-get works," he says. "More often than not, people tend to think that if someone is mean to them, they're not interested." He says that simply being nice is the best way to go. "To be nice to people is invariably the best way to show them that you like them," Ditto says. "And people tend to like people who like them." Even though McCauley plays hard-to-get with Hoffman now, he thinks it's very risky to play it when first meeting someone. "It's hard enough to meet the right people in college," he says. "So I don't think you should play games at the start. Who knows what you could miss out on." Jean Tarbett is a junior magazine journalism major. She's not telling whether she plays hard to get.