Open AccessJournal Article
Blatant Benevolence and Conspicuous Consumption: When Romantic Motives Elicit Strategic Costly Signals
TLDR
In this article, the authors examined the possibility that conspicuous displays of consumption and benevolence might serve as ''costly signals'' of desirable mate qualities, and found that romantic motives seem to produce highly strategic and sex-specific self-presentations best understood within a costly signaling framework.Abstract:
Conspicuous displays of consumption and benevolence might serve as \"costly signals\" of desirable mate qualities. If so, they should vary strategically with manipulations of mating-related motives. The authors examined this possibility in 4 experiments. Inducing mating goals in men increased their willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not on basic necessities. In women, mating goals boosted public--but not private--helping. Although mating motivation did not generally inspire helping in men, it did induce more helpfulness in contexts in which they could display heroism or dominance. Conversely, although mating motivation did not lead women to conspicuously consume, it did lead women to spend more publicly on helpful causes. Overall, romantic motives seem to produce highly strategic and sex-specific self-presentations best understood within a costly signaling framework.read more
Citations
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Is meat sexy? Meat preference as a function of the sexual motivation system
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the possibility that men's sexual motivation, when elicited, can influence their preference for meat because meat signals status to others, including women, and signalling status is one way to help men achieve their mating goals.
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Romantic motives and risk-taking: an evolutionary approach
TL;DR: For instance, this paper found that activating a mating goal was associated with men's propensity to risk-taking, and that a romantic motivation increased men's reported willingness to take risks.
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Healthy or wealthy? Attractive individuals induce sex-specific food preferences
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated whether mate attraction, induced by exposure to attractive opposite-sex individuals, has a differential effect on the foods and beverages that men and women prefer to consume.
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Manipulated luxury-apartment ownership enhances opposite-sex attraction in females but not males
Michael J. Dunn,A. Hill +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the illusion of status-linked property ownership was achieved by presenting a target male and female (matched for attractiveness) adopting a casual posture standing in either a high status (luxury apartment) or a neutral status (standard apartment) context.
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Social Moral Licensing
Wassili Lasarov,Stefan Hoffmann +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a conceptual framework of social moral licensing was developed and two main avenues for future research via six propositions: the conspicuousness of moral licensing, which considers moral licensing that comes into play when people are observed by others, and the relativity of moral license, which focuses on social comparisons between individuals, their ingroups and outgroups.
References
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Book
Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research
Martin Fishbein,Icek Ajzen +1 more
Journal ArticleDOI
The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour. I
TL;DR: A genetical mathematical model is described which allows for interactions between relatives on one another's fitness and a quantity is found which incorporates the maximizing property of Darwinian fitness, named “inclusive fitness”.
Book
Handbook of social psychology
TL;DR: In this paper, Neuberg and Heine discuss the notion of belonging, acceptance, belonging, and belonging in the social world, and discuss the relationship between friendship, membership, status, power, and subordination.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism
TL;DR: In this paper, a model is presented to account for the natural selection of what is termed reciprocally altruistic behavior, and the model shows how selection can operate against the cheater (non-reciprocator) in the system.