I thought Sundie et al.’s study of conspicuous consumption as a sexual signaling system was really interesting and some of the results definitely surprised me. They found that men are more likely to use conspicuous consumption as a strategy when they are pursuing a short-term, rather than long-term, mate, and that conspicuous consumption increased men’s desirability as short-term, but not long-term, mates. They compare conspicuous consumption by men to the ostentatious tails of peacocks, which have no value other than attracting females.
One of my questions is why are men the ones who use conspicuous consumption to attract mates when in our culture women are supposed to adorn themselves to be more attractive? Shouldn’t women be the peacocks with pretty tails, so to speak?
My other question is about the long-term versus short-term desirability. Shouldn’t the ability to spend lots of money be more appealing in the long-term (because it signifies that the man could provide for future children)? What advantage could conspicuous consumption have for a low-investment, short-term relationship?
To answer your first question, men are the ones using conspicuous consumption because women are the ones in our culture who do the "choosing of the mate." This may seem counter-intuitive, given how much attention to their appearance many women give. But since women have a higher reproductive burden, since they are the ones who will have to, if they get pregnant, carry a child for nine months and then likely care for it for eighteen years, whereas the father could just have sex with the mother and then ditch her ... psych studies show that women are the ones who are "choosier" when picking a mate, either as a sexual partner or as a longterm partner.
ReplyDeleteAs for your second question, extravagant expenditures is not a good sign, I wouldn't think, for a longterm relationship because it's wasteful. I would presume that someone who spends like that wouldn't be good at planning for the future and might be blowing his money in the meantime. In the paper it said that women attracted to conspicuous consumption wanted men to benefit financially from the gifts that dating a heavy spender would provide them.