Are men hardwired to overspend?
Dec. 8, 2008ANN ARBOR, Mich.—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."
The University of Michigan School of Public Health has been working to promote health and prevent disease since 1941, and is consistently ranked among the top five public health schools in the nation. Faculty and students in the school's five academic departments and dozens of collaborative centers and initiatives are forging new solutions to the complex health challenges of today, including chronic disease, health care quality and finance, emerging genetic technologies, climate change, socioeconomic inequalities and their impact on health, infectious disease, and the globalization of health.
Related Links:
Higher Mating Intentions and Mating Success
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