work for than the one that implied many job positions were available. Subjects also felt that the advertisement that suggested limited vacancies translated to higher wages. In short, subjects placed a positive, higher value on the company that suggested that there were scarce job vacancies available. Another study examined how the scarcity of men may lead women to seek high-paying careers and to delay starting a family. This effect was driven by how the sex ratio altered the mating market, not just the job market. Sex ratios involving a scarcity of men led women to seek lucrative careers because of the difficulty women have in finding an investing, long-term mate under such circumstances. Conditional variations Although the scarcity heuristic can always affect judgment and perception, certain situations exacerbate the effect. New scarcity and competition are common cases. New scarcity New scarcity occurs when our irrational desire for limited resources increases when we move from a state of abundance to a state of scarcity. This is in line with psychological reactance theory, which states that a person will react strongly when they perceive that their options are likely to be lessened in the future. demonstrated this principle with a simple experiment. They divided people into two groups, giving one group a jar of ten cookies and another a jar with only two cookies. When asked to rate the quality of the cookie the group with two, in line with the scarcity heuristic, found the cookies more desirable. The researchers then added a new element. Some participants were first given a jar of ten cookies, but before participants could sample the cookie, experimenters removed 8 cookies so that there were again only two. The group first having ten but then were reduced to two, rated the cookies more desirable than both of the other groups. Competition In situations when others are directly competing for scarce resources, the value we assign to objects is further inflated. Advertisers commonly take advantage of scarcity heuristics by marketing products as “hot items” or by telling customers that certain goods will sell out quickly. Effects of scarcity in animals Scarcity is not only seen in humans. It can also be seen in the behavior of animals. In fact, one example of scarcity in animals is water. Livestock animals have bodies that are more than half water in volume. The smaller and indigenous animals are more tolerant due