I've been pondering this 2007 JPSP article, summarized by the Economist:
The participants were then asked … to imagine they had $5,000 in the bank. They could spend part or all of it on various luxury items such as a new car, a dinner party at a restaurant or a holiday in Europe. They were also asked what fraction of a hypothetical 60 hours of leisure time during the course of a month they would devote to volunteer work. …
In the romantically primed group, the men went wild with the Monopoly money. Conversely, the women volunteered their lives away. … Meanwhile, in the other group there was little inclination either to profligate spending or to good works. Based on this result, it looks as though the sexes do, indeed, have different strategies for showing off. …
[In] another experiment they found that when requests for benevolence were financial, rather than time-consuming, romantically primed men were happy to chip in extravagantly. … The primed men were also willing (or at least said they were willing) to act heroically as well as spend—but only if the action suggested was life-threatening. Women, romantically primed or not, weren't.
The JSPS article concluded:
their underlying motives. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The disturbing thing is that these folks were probably unaware that their generosity was caused in large part by romantic feelings. They probably thought they just wanted to help, not that they wanted to help especially when it might impress potential mates. The key question: in what sense were these folks mistaken about what they wanted?
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