Sex-specific
hormones influence our consumer behaviors in a myriad of ways. See
here for one of my earliest
Psychology Today posts in which I discussed a study that I had conducted with one of my former graduate students (John G. Vongas) on the links between conspicuous consumption and men's
testosterone levels. I have also written several posts about the effects of the menstrual cycle on a wide range of phenomena (see
here,
here,
here, and
here). As I explain in my recently released trade book,
The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature, the menstrual cycle has a profound effect on women's
consumer choices. I have a forthcoming paper with Eric Stenstrom, my most senior graduate student, on the effects of the menstrual cycle on beautification and food consumption (I'll discuss this study in a future post).
In today's post, I'd like to briefly describe a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology authored by Inge Lens, Karolien Driesmans, Mario Pandelaere, and Kim Janssens that ties together conspicuous consumption and the menstrual cycle. You might think that the researchers were interested in investigating whether women would be differentially showy in their conspicuous consumption as a function of their menstrual status. For example, might they be more inclined to wear the Prada handbag when maximally fertile? In actuality, this was not the focus of the Belgian researchers. Instead, they explored whether women's recall of various products, consisting of functional and status products (e.g., Porsche, Aston Martin, Maserati) would vary as a function of where they were in their menstrual cycles.
The researchers used a visual attention task in which they showed female participants ten sets of six products (five functional and one status product in each set). The exposure length was one second for each set and then they were provided twenty-five seconds to jot down what they had viewed. Subsequently, Lens et al. calculated the number of status products that were recalled (across the menstrual cycle) and the position of recall (across the menstrual cycle). In line with their predictions, they found that maximally fertile women (who were not taking any contraceptive pills) recalled a greater number of status products and recalled them earlier than their counterparts in the non-fertile phases of the ovulatory cycle.
Bottom line: Male-based conspicuous consumption (sexual signaling) is differentially effective as a function of the female viewing audience's hormonal status! The consumer arena is one active lek!
Source for Image:
http://bit.ly/qyXpkG
