14 DAY TRIAL // Investigators at the University of Minnesota discovered in a recent study that men tend to display an increase in overall impulsive behaviors when they perceive a scarcity of women available “on the market.” This also translates into a tendency to spend more, and become less frugal.
What is interesting about this is that the behavior is not unique to our species, since examples of similar instances occurring in nature abound. The notion that male-to-female ratios affects spending patterns has been around for a while, so the UM team decided to investigate it thoroughly.
In order to test their work hypothesis, the team recruited a number of volunteers. They then made the participants read articles describing either a scarcity of men, or a scarcity of women, available in society at that particular time.
The goal was to put the test subjects in the necessary mindset to display altered behavioral patterns. The research team was coordinated by lead study author and UM assistant professor of marketing, Vladas Griskevicius, PhD, PsychCentral reports.
“What we see in other animals is that when females are scarce, males become more competitive. They compete more for access to mates. How do humans compete for access to mates? What you find across cultures is that men often do it through money, through status and through products,” he says.
In the new experiments, after participants were unconsciously conditioned, they were asked a series of questions, including how much money they would save from each month's paycheck, and how much they would borrow from their banks via credit cards for current expenditures.
In the group of men that were led to believe women were more scarce, the average level of savings decreased by a whopping 42 percent, whereas the participants reported a willingness to borrow 82 percent more money than usual via their credit cards, monthly.
The UM team says that the study participants altered their behaviors in an unconscious way, since none of them figured out what the study was actually trying to achieve. This suggests that the response is, in fact, hardwired into our genes and brain.
This actually makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, since this type of behavior increases a man's individual chances at successful reproduction. It could be that, before modern societies emerged, the competition between the males of our species was also violent, as researchers are seeing in less-advanced species today.
“Economics tells us that humans make decisions by carefully thinking through our choices; that we’re not like animals,” Griskevicius explains. Lately, that view has come under sharp attack from several directions.
“It turns out we have a lot in common with other animals. Some of our behaviors are much more reflexive and subconscious. We see that there are more men than women in our environment and it automatically changes our desires, our behaviors, and our entire psychology,” the team leader concludes.