Life

PEOPLE have radically diverse responses to the very idea of conspicuous consumption. Some folks consider it blindingly obvious that most economic behaviour is driven by status seeking, social signalling and sexual solicitation. These include most Marxists, marketers, working-class fundamentalists and divorced women. Other folks consider this an outrageously cynical view, and argue that most consumption is for individual pleasure ("utility") and family prosperity ("security"). Those folks include most capitalists, economists, upper-class fundamentalists, and soon-to-be-divorced men.

Such differences of opinion can rarely be resolved by trading examples or anecdotes, or arguing from first principles. It more often helps to apply some psychology. With this in mind, some colleagues and I devised a series of experiments inspired by "costly signalling theory" - the idea that animals, including humans, use costly, intricate and hard-to-fake signals to flaunt their biological fitness to potential mates and social partners. Our goal was to see how thinking about mating influences people's decisions about spending and giving (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 93, p 85).

In the first experiment the team, led by Vladas Griskevicius from Arizona State University in Tempe and Josh Tybur from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, invited college students to the lab in small groups. Each was randomly assigned to one of two conditions: "mating" or "non-mating". The mating subjects looked at three photographs of people of the opposite-sex on a computer screen, picked which one they thought most desirable, and spent a few minutes writing about an ideal first date with that person. The non-mating subjects looked at a street scene photograph and spent the same amount of time writing about the ideal weather for walking around and looking at the buildings it featured.

Then, all subjects were asked to imagine that they had a modest windfall of money, such as a lottery win of a few thousand dollars, and must choose how much they wanted to spend on a variety of conspicuous luxuries - such as a new watch, European vacation or new car - and how much they would save in a bank account. They were then asked to imagine that they had some extra time available per week, and were asked to choose how many hours they would spend volunteering - such as working at a homeless shelter or helping at a children's hospital.

The results were dramatic: men in the mating condition said they would spend much more money than men in the non-mating condition - for example, they might take the European vacation rather than saving that money - but there was no mating effect on women's consumption decisions. On the other hand, women in the mating condition said they would spend much more time volunteering than women in the non-mating condition. There was no mating effect on men's volunteering. This study confirmed that conspicuous consumption (for men) and conspicuous charity (for women) can be increased by thinking about mating opportunities, and so can function strategically as a form of mating display.

Because costly signalling theory suggests that signals must be conspicuous and publicly observable in order to attract friends or mates, we wanted to see whether this mating effect applied especially to conspicuous rather than inconspicuous consumption and volunteering. So in a second experiment, another set of college students were randomly assigned to similar mating or non-mating conditions. Then, subjects indicated how much money they would want to spend on the same conspicuous consumption luxuries from study 1, or on some new "inconspicuous" necessities such as basic toiletries and household cleaning products. Finally, subjects indicated how much time they would want to spend on the same conspicuous volunteering from study 1, or on some inconspicuous but socially helpful activities such as picking up trash alone in a park or taking shorter showers to conserve water.

The results here were equally clear: men in the mating condition, compared with the non-mating condition, said they would spend more money on the conspicuous luxuries, and that they would actually spend less on the inconspicuous necessities; there was no effect on female consumption decisions. In contrast, women in the mating condition, compared with those in the non-mating condition, said they would spend more time on conspicuous pro-social volunteering, but no more time on the inconspicuous pro-social activities. Again, there was no effect on male volunteering. So, thinking about mating does not simply increase overall consumer spending or pro-social volunteering; it only increases conspicuous consumption or conspicuous charity - the behaviours that work best as public, costly displays.

It was a bit surprising that in both studies, the mating-primed men did not act more conspicuously benevolent, and the mating-primed women did not spend more on conspicuous consumption. Maybe mating-primed men only favour conspicuously heroic forms of benevolence, such as saving strangers from drowning, and mating-primed women only favour conspicuously generous forms of spending, such as bidding high at charity auctions. So, in study 3, another set of students followed the same routine as in study 2, except that they could choose to spend money on the original forms of conspicuous consumption or on more generous forms such as donating to natural disaster victims at an on-campus booth and bidding high at a public auction to raise money for sick children. Also, they could choose to spend time and energy on the original forms of conspicuous charity or on more heroic activities, such as saving someone from a burning building or distracting a grizzly bear from attacking a stranger.

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