Are men hardwired to overspend?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Bling, foreclosures, rising credit card debt, bank and auto bailouts, upside down mortgages and perhaps a mid-life crisis new Corvette—all symptoms of compulsive overspending.

University of Michigan researcher Daniel Kruger looks to evolution and mating for an explanation. He theorizes that men overspend to attract mates. It all boils down, as it has for hundreds of thousands of years, to making babies.

Kruger, an assistant research scientist in the School of Public Health, tested his hypothesis in a community sample of adults aged 18-45 and found that the degree of financial consumption was directly related to future mating intentions and past mating success for men but not for women.

Financial consumption was the only factor that predicted how many partners men wanted in the next five years and also predicted the number of partners they had in the previous five years, Kruger said. Being married made a difference in the frequency of one-time sexual partners in the last year, but not in the number of partners in the past or desired in the future.

The 25 percent of men with the most conservative financial strategies had an average of three partners in the past five years and desired an average of just one in the next five years. The 2 percent of men with the riskiest financial strategies had double those numbers.

"Men in the ancestral environment were valued if they were good providers. Now we have this new consumer culture, so basically we show our potential through the consumer goods that we purchase, rather than being a good hunter or providing protection," Kruger said.

"It gives an ultimate explanation for why we feel we have to keep up with the Joneses. Especially for guys, our position in the social hierarchy is based on our resources. Economic success has traditionally been good for men's reproductive success, so men have an incentive to show that they are doing well economically."

So where does the current economic downturn come into play?

"It is partially a result of our economic system and recent financial policies, but I really do think that our evolved mating strategies have an influence. Our competition for economic displays drives our consumer economy and culture of affluence," he said. "In terms of the current mortgage crisis, the findings suggest that one of the reasons why we overextend ourselves is that we're basically in a status race. We have expectations that spiral upward as people make more money and everyone wants to show that they are better than average."

Related link: http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP06603612.pdf

Provided by University of Michigan

   

• BigTone - Dec 08, 2008
  • Rank: not rated yet
  I agree that one driver for those that are silly enough to be fiscally irresponsible could be to - attract mates. It is ridiculous to suggest that genetic predispositions which gently affect behavior cannot be overcome by rational individuals. Said simply, humans have choices - we can take drugs, drink ourselves silly, sleep with any woman we can, gamble, and smoke ourselves to death at any time - most of us choose not to behave in a matter that is self destructive no matter how many pleasure areas are activated in our brains.
  
  The only exceptions for genetics dictating behavior should be something as dramatic as perhaps homosexuality.
  
  Besides any guy that is successful with women will tell you that hitting the gym and learning how to talk to women - will attract all mates you could want... Money helps obviously, but its just one tool in attracting women.
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5