Blatant benevolence and conspicuous consumption: When romantic motives elicit strategic costly signals.
Vladas Griskevicius and five colleagues tested whether spending and helping can work as costly signals, displays that are believable because they cost something, by putting people into a romantic frame of mind across four experiments. In men, romantic motives raised willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not on basic necessities. In women, they raised helping in public but left private helping unchanged. The authors also report crossings of that pattern: men became more helpful where helping allowed a display of heroism or dominance, and women spent more publicly on helpful causes. They interpret the results as strategic, sex-specific self-presentation of the kind a costly-signalling account predicts. These are laboratory manipulations with willingness measures as outcomes rather than real spending or donations, and this vault has found no direct replication of the paper either way.
Vladas Griskevicius and five colleagues tested whether spending and helping can work as costly signals, displays that are believable because they cost something, by putting people into a romantic frame of mind across four experiments. In men, romantic motives raised willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not on basic necessities. In women, they raised helping in public but left private helping unchanged. The authors also report crossings of that pattern: men became more helpful where helping allowed a display of heroism or dominance, and women spent more publicly on helpful causes. They interpret the results as strategic, sex-specific self-presentation of the kind a costly-signalling account predicts. These are laboratory manipulations with willingness measures as outcomes rather than real spending or donations, and this vault has found no direct replication of the paper either way.
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Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., Sundie, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Miller, G. F., & Kenrick, D. T. (2007). 'Blatant benevolence and conspicuous consumption: when romantic motives elicit strategic costly signals.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(1), 85-102. Four experiments; inducing mating goals in men increased willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not basic necessities; in women mating goals boosted public but not private helping; mating motivation induced more helpfulness in men in contexts allowing displays of heroism or dominance, and led women to spend more publicly on helpful causes. Verified at the published record 2026-10-06. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.1.85
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- Public Charity and Who Is Watching, Why We Crave
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https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.1.85
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.93.1.85