Why Men Spend: To Lure Mates

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Turns out that peacock tails and plasma screen TVs might mean the same thing from a biological perspective.

Relatively recent overspending patterns among men are merely the result of an evolutionary drive to attract mates, according to new research from University of Michigan researcher Daniel Kruger.

Prof. Kruger looked at a random sample of men aged 18-45 and asked them questions about how much they spend, save and what their relationship patterns were like. Kruger's questions probed the linkage between how much of one man's income is spent on consumer goods and his sexual relationships.

He found that society is engaged in a status race. Men who have a greater tendency to maximize their display of economic power (even if this means racking up credit card debt to do it) score relatively higher in mating effort. Punchline: those who show more bling have more partners in the short run, but the savers tend to do better when it comes to marital bliss. Those who enter into a committed relationship shift away from seeking mates and "towards investment in the relationship and potential offspring," he writes. Here, the savers are rewarded.

"Men are competing with each other to demonstrate their resource potential," Kruger says. "That drives this keeping up with the Jones phenomenon. It's a perpetual spiral of competitiveness."

Prof. Kruger argues that although women might splurge on shoes or binge on bags, their attitudes about spending and wealth differ from their male counterparts. Women with high-powered jobs tend to seek partners that have even higher-powered jobs, rather than potential stay-at-home dads. "Evolution hasn't really caught up yet," Prof. Kruger says. "Women are still valued for their physiological reproductive values, their ability to raise and bear offspring...Men are interested in attractive women."

And as the cloud of the Madoff scandal looms, Prof. Kruger found that risk-taking plays a role as well. From his findings:

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.

Among women, Kruger found no relationship between financial consumption and mating patterns.

Kruger's paper also examines the impacts of age, socioeconomic status and education level on individual consumer spending. You can read the whole thing from the Evolutionary Psychology Journal here.

And in the meantime, those looking for long-term love can hone their retirement account pickup lines.