A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that an abundance of men leads the men to discount the future and desire immediate rewards.
In other words, men are “spending money on stupid things and taking on credit card debt because they sense there’s a scarcity of ladies in the geographic area,” writes Josh Sanburn in Time magazine.
A number of researchers have been examining people’s economic behavior when there is an imbalance of mating opportunities.
“The study’s authors point to other research showing that money decisions are related to mating efforts, including one finding that shows that increased male mating efforts lead to spending on items like designer shoes, fine wines and Porches, and one study even finds that men become more economically impulsive after just touching a woman’s bra.”
It turns out that “conspicuous consumption is a form of economic behavior in which self-presentational concerns override desires to obtain goods at bargain prices,” another group of researchers found in a study published last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. That study was titled “Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System.”
And here’s no surprise: A scarcity of women led people to expect men to spend more money during courtship, the researchers said.
“These seemingly dumb behaviors are consistent with our growing understanding of evolutionary biology,” Sanburn writes. “So the next time you see some dude buying a round of Cosmos for a group of women at a bar, it’s probably because there aren’t that many girls around for him to date. Just let him be. It’s science.”
Shop to Cope
We all know that companies want us to shop as therapy. But because that message seems, well, too direct, they create subliminal advertising that sneaks that urge to shop into your subconscious.
But Lucky magazine, which is about shopping and style, has decided to just get rid of the pretense and has launched a new advertising campaign, called ‘Fill the Void,’ aimed at young adult women. The magazine is encouraging this consumer group to tackle life’s challenges by shopping, reports Brad Tuttle of Time magazine.
“Few ads have had the chutzpah to spread this message as directly and blatantly as the new ‘Fill the Void’ series from the magazine,” Tuttle writes.
Here are some of the advertising slogans:
-- “My boyfriend dumped me via text.”
-- “My longest relationship is with my doorman.”
-- “My intern is the only one following me on Twitter.”
Under each line is a product – a trendy shoe, handbag or dress -- and the tagline that says “Fill The Void,” as a way to encourage women to shop to cope. “Change The Way You Shop This Fall,” the ads say. The ads are part of a new e-commerce platform, www.myluckymag.com, which is scheduled to launch online Friday, Aug. 17, reports an Ad Age blog.
Susan Krauss Whitbourne, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is disturbed by the campaign.
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