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The latest Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says we use visible luxuries and helpfulness in part as ways to attract mates:
Conspicuous displays of consumption and benevolence might serve as "costly signals" of desirable mate qualities. If so, they should vary strategically with manipulations of mating-related motives. The authors examined this possibility in 4 experiments. Inducing mating goals in men increased their willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not on basic necessities. In women, mating goals boosted public-but not private–helping. Although mating motivation did not generally inspire helping in men, it did induce more helpfulness in contexts in which they could display heroism or dominance. Conversely, although mating motivation did not lead women to conspicuously consume, it did lead women to spend more publicly on helpful causes. Overall, romantic motives seem to produce highly strategic and sex-specific self-presentations best understood within a costly signaling framework.
This suggests that female luxury consumption, and non-heroic non-dominant male helping, are not done to impress potential mates. Of course they could still be costly signals, but to other audiences.
What Signals What?
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I love reading Robin Hanson's blog Overcoming Bias. Today, a post on conspicuous consumption and public causes caught my eye. It reminded me of Tor Norretranders's keynote at EuroOSCON last year, and not just because Robin is keynoting this year....
I love it when psychologists show something that's already been known and demonstrated for how long now? I would love to ask the men in the sidebar, how they chose their mates. What did you notice first? Her fecundity, helpfulness, or the cost of her shoes? And in what order?
It would be interesting to do a study on how women use conspicuous consumption to relate to each other. Working in the fashion field for many years, I found that women buy luxury goods, especially accessories, for each other, not men. We send signals to each other in the mating game, that men don't even notice, as they're concerned with fecundity. In other words, women use such goods to evoke insecurity in other women, causing them to stay away from the men they are trying to attract. Whether this is conscious or not, is beside the point, as the same luxury makes you feel good (and powerful to other women), whether you get the man or not.