The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think

by Kenrick, Douglas T.

  Does conspicuous consumption work? In one study, Jill Sundie and her colleagues compared women’s interest in young professional men who drove either a flashy Porsche or a modest Honda. The flashy car impressed women, who indicated that they would rather go out on a date with the guy driving the Porsche. But women weren’t blindly seduced by the bling. When asked which man they would rather marry, the luster of the conspicuous car quickly dulled. For long-term commitment, women preferred the less flashy, and likely more reliable, fellow driving the Honda.

  THE ULTIMATE DRIVER OF BEHAVIOR

  After the “peacocks and Porsches” findings were published, both Jill and Vlad got yet another wave of e-mails, calls, and letters from outraged Porsche owners. These men (and they were all men) argued that their conspicuous consumption had nothing at all to do with the ultimate reason of attracting a mate. They pointed instead to various proximate reasons. Some said they had purchased the cars for their distinctive styling; others bought them because they liked the feel of a Porsche; still others simply enjoyed the experience of cruising with the top down on weekends. As one man put it, he’d owned his Porsche for over two decades and been happily married to his wife for most of that time. Of course, this raises the question why he purchased a Porsche back when he was single and whether it had anything to do with sparking the interest of this attractive woman.

  Vlad received one phone call from the president of a European Porsche enthusiasts’ club. This guy was clearly concerned, but unlike the others, he wasn’t surprised or angered by the findings. Rather, he was distraught about what the study would reveal to the wives of Porsche owners about their husbands. The same fellow later sent Vlad a German Porsche television advertisement that he thought “might be related” to the study. In the ad, a beautiful woman in a long raincoat walks by a shiny new Porsche in a mysterious dark alley. She is struck by the awesome beauty of the car and begins to caress its smooth angles flirtatiously. Finally, unable to resist, she opens her coat to expose her almost naked body to the Porsche.

  Not very subtle. But a superb depiction of the ultimate reason for buying a Porsche.

  Once again, when we observe people doing seemingly foolish things like throwing away money to have their Porsches or their bathroom fixtures plated in gold, there is often more going on than meets the eye. Although conspicuous consumption might appear to be vain and wasteful, such behavior can serve an important function at a deeper evolutionary level.

  Our choices have multiple causes; some obvious, others obscure. We are aware of some of the proximate causes of our behavior. If you’ve ever purchased a luxury car, you might have spent a lot of time thinking about its eye-popping leather interior or its chrome-plated engine that blasts from zero to sixty in a few milliseconds. And if you bought a hybrid car, you may very well have been thinking about how the environmental benefits outweighed the hefty price tag. But most of the time we are not consciously aware of the underlying ultimate reasons for our choices.

  WHEN IT COMES to mating purchases, a person’s choices can be very different based on one particularly important biological factor—whether that person is male or female. For example, men use conspicuous consumption to attract mates but women don’t. In fact, sex differences go much deeper than conspicuous consumption. If you want to predict where a person is likely to invest his or her limited resources, what he or she is likely to value, and which products he or she is likely to buy, perhaps the most important question to ask is this: Are we are talking about a man or a woman? In the next chapter, we look more closely at how men’s and women’s decisions differ—and why. We start by exploring a puzzling aspect of human culture: Why do men in some societies pay several years’ income for the company of a woman, whereas in other societies a woman’s family pays an immense dowry to buy her the company of a man?

  8

  Sexual Economics: His and Hers

  IN MARCH 2008, Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign his position as governor of New York, steeped in scandal over his involvement with the Emperor’s Club VIP escort service. Spitzer had racked up over $80,000 in bills for services that are, even in the free-wheeling Empire State, decidedly illegal—as he no doubt knew, having previously served as New York’s attorney general. In the media frenzy that followed, reporters discovered that some of the world’s wealthiest men had, like Spitzer, paid handsomely for the services of Emperor’s Club escorts.

  For many of us less tycoonish proletarians, an astonishing part of the scandal was how little escorting $80,000 would buy from this particular enterprise, whose website advertised a “social introduction service for those accustomed to excellence.” The website specialized in introducing “gentlemen of exceptional standards” to women who included “fashion models, pageant winners and exquisite students.” To make consumers’ decisions easier, the website included prices in American dollars, British pounds, and euros, with a wide choice of female companions ranked from three diamonds to seven diamonds, depending on “the model’s character and the grace with which she handles public relations/interactions.” Alluring photos of the women in high-fashion, though typically low-coverage, outfits drew attention to their stunningly graceful curves, if not their social graces. For the company of a woman ranked with seven diamonds (presumably for having the most character and grace), a fellow would have to shell out $3,100 for just one hour’s worth of escorting. If he wanted a twenty-four-hour period of escortship, the bill would be $31,000 (more than enough to buy a fully equipped new Prius). Potential customers interested in something slightly less pricey could settle for a three-diamond model at a mere $1,000 an hour.

  What some men pay for an hour’s worth of a woman’s company, other men pay for a lifetime’s. The going rate for a wife in Afghanistan, as reported by the Guardian, is £2,000 (about $3,140). Although this might sound like pocket change to one of the Emperor Club’s VIPs, it is two years’ income for a typical Afghan. Down in sub-Saharan Africa and across many parts of Asia, the cost of a bride likewise runs to more than a man’s entire annual income. Most men in those countries will have to save every penny even to be considered as a potential husband, and many still won’t have enough to qualify.

  Why are men willing to pay so much for the company of a woman? This question is as much about mammalian biology as economics. It’s the question at the heart of a thorny issue about whether men’s and women’s psychologies are the same or different. While the sexes are often more alike than dissimilar, here we examine an important reproductive difference between them. We will see how this simple biological difference in reproduction provides insight into much more than prostitution and marriage. It also shapes how men and women make decisions about which products to buy in a recession, how big a tip to leave at a restaurant, and even how high a credit bill they are willing to run up. To explain how, we next introduce you to the “his” and “hers” versions of our subselves.

  WHY DO MEN PAY SO MUCH FOR THE COMPANY OF A WOMAN?

  Economist Siwan Anderson studies bride price—the payment made by a groom’s family to the family of his future bride. Anderson contrasts the bride price with dowry, a payment made by a bride’s family to the groom’s at the time of marriage. While people in Western societies may be more familiar with the concept of dowry, bride price is actually much more prevalent around the world. Murdock’s World Ethnographic Atlas of 1,167 preindustrial societies shows that bride price is found in fully two-thirds of the world’s societies, whereas dowry is found in less than 4 percent.

  Why is bride price so prevalent? Anderson believes that bride price has generally served, at least in part, as payment for a woman’s fertility. The price of a bride has historically been linked to virginity, with young, healthy virgins commanding the highest prices, and women who already have children often not bringing any bride price at all.

  In the language of evolutionary biology, the economics of bride price are linked to the biological principle of minimum parental investment. In any mammalian species, hu
mans included, reproduction requires females, at a minimum, to carry an energetically hungry fetus for several months and then nurse it afterward. Males, by contrast, are biologically exempt from paying the high cost of reproduction. The minimum male requirement is a donation of sperm.

  Human males don’t get a completely free ride, though. Because human babies are born especially helpless, their chances of survival and success in life increase dramatically if the father hangs around to provide resources for the infant and the mother. So before a woman agrees to the possibility of becoming pregnant and incurring the high biological costs of reproduction, she and her family often demand evidence that a potential suitor is willing and able to provide resources. Forking over a substantial portion of his income, whether by paying a bride price or purchasing a diamond engagement ring, is, for the man, like making a down payment, indicating a commitment to stick around and provide resources over the long haul.

  In a thought-provoking paper on sexual economics, social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs argue that this biological sex difference in reproduction leads to a situation in which men are willing to pay for sex and women set the price—in the form of money, commitment, or other resources. If the man is not willing to commit resources over the long haul, then the woman may demand a high onetime price for her affections, like the escorts at the Emperor’s Club. Baumeister and Vohs argue that men are motivated to seek sex at the lowest possible price, whereas women are motivated to get the highest price possible. From this perspective, sex for women is more of a cost, whereas for men it’s more of an opportunity.

  Consider the minimum standard you would require before you would consider someone as a marriage or dating partner. For example, what is the minimum level of intelligence you would require in a person before you’d consider marrying him or her? Now consider this: Would that standard change if you were only thinking about a sexual partner? For instance, what is the minimum intelligence you would need to consider having a one-night stand with a person (assuming you’d be willing to do such a thing and that no one would ever find out about it)?

  When Doug and his colleagues asked college students about their minimum standards for different types of relationships, men and women had very similar standards for a date (seeking at least an average IQ). The sexes also converged in their criteria for a marriage partner (for which only above-average applicants need apply). But for sexual partners, especially one-night stands, men and women parted company. Women would not sleep with a guy unless he scored well above average in intelligence. When a man isn’t going to stick around, the woman demands more for the pleasure of her intimate company—sometimes even $31,000 for just one day. But men were willing to have sex with a woman even if she was well below average in intelligence. (Is she able to tie her own shoes? No? Well, that’s not really so important.)

  There isn’t anything peculiarly American about American males’ lower standards for sexual partners. David Schmitt and his team of 118 researchers from six different continents found the same pattern in all fifty-two societies they examined. But all of these studies examined only what people were willing to report on questionnaires. What if men and women were offered a real opportunity for a one-night stand? Would they still respond so differently?

  A now classic study in the 1980s had a member of the opposite sex approach students on campus and say, “I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive.” Before the student could recover from the possible shock of this very direct compliment, the person asked, “Would you go to bed with me?”

  How would you have reacted to this come-on? If you are a woman, the odds are pretty high you would have said no. In fact, 100 percent of women said no to the request. And it wasn’t because the guy was otherwise scary or unattractive. If he instead asked, “Would you go out with me?” over 50 percent of the women said yes.

  But if you are a man, we’d bet money on a different outcome. When this total stranger propositioned them for casual sex, over 70 percent of men said yes. In fact, men were more likely to agree to go to bed than to go on a date. Some of the guys even asked, “Do we have to wait till tonight?” And the few men who did say no were simultaneously thankful and apologetic, saying things like, “Oh, thanks for asking, but I can’t. I just got engaged.”

  A decade later, after the AIDS epidemic had become public, the researchers conducted the same study again. Alas, nothing had changed: over 70 percent of men again said, “Sure!” while 0 percent of the women were willing, often reacting with irritation and some variant of “Get lost, creep!”

  This sex difference in wariness about having a one-night stand makes sense in terms of the basic biological sex difference in minimum parental investment. If a woman gets pregnant, she will have to pay a high biological cost: she’ll have to carry a fetus, then nurse an infant, and then care for a child for years afterward. This is true regardless of whether her pregnancy stems from a one-night encounter with a charming stranger or from the thousandth night of conjugal bliss with her loving, dedicated husband. If a man has a one-night stand, on the other hand, he can recover his caloric investment by eating an extra piece of bacon for breakfast the next morning.

  I LOVE YOU . . . SORT OF

  Imagine you’re a woman and your new romantic partner says, “I love you,” for the very first time. How would you react? Would you be thrilled? Or might you be a little suspicious? A man’s saying, “I love you,” implies a desire to invest more than just the time it takes to implant sperm and suggests that he might even stick around to help raise the children. But talk is cheap, and because such verbal commitments can be broken, women are often suspicious of the intentions behind a man’s profession of love.

  Women and men have been shown to have different reactions the first time a new partner professes his or her love. The sex difference stems from whether these three words of loving assurance are said before or after the new couple has started having sex. Women are happier to hear “I love you” afterward, whereas men are happier to hear it before the couple becomes intimate.

  Why? Perhaps men take a woman’s loving words as a signal that he is better positioned to experience carnal lovemaking in the near future. But after the fact, hearing “I love you” from a woman might sound more like “Don’t you dare leave me!” In fact, men of the noncommittal “unrestricted” variety (those gold Porsche drivers we met in the last chapter) are rather unhappy to hear “I love you” from a woman after sex has already occurred, perhaps because these fellows were hoping to reap the sexual benefit without having to pay a commitment cost.

  Josh Ackerman, a professor at MIT who led the “I love you” study, explains that “saying ‘I love you’ is a negotiation process.” When men and women negotiate a relationship, both are trying to avoid a different evolutionary mistake. For women, it would be a big mistake to impulsively trust a partner’s declaration of “I love you” and gamble on a sexual relationship without the man’s investment. For men, the big mistake would be failure to communicate commitment and potentially lose a sexual relationship.

  In fact, the study found that men and women didn’t just differ in their reactions to hearing “I love you”; they also differed in who said these words first in a relationship. When Ackerman and his team first surveyed people about their beliefs, most people thought that women tend to be the first to say, “I love you.” After all, women are supposed to be mushy romantic types who express their feelings. But in actual relationships, men were first to profess their love 70 percent of the time, saying, “I love you” forty-two days earlier in a relationship than women, on average!

  An evolutionary perspective suggests that women are warranted in their wariness when a man claims to be falling in love so quickly. Better to wait and see if he produces other signs of continuing commitment, such as, perhaps, a diamond ring worth a few months’ salary.

  ARE MEN COMPLETELY NONDISCRIMINATING?

  Although many men might be perfectly willing to h
op into bed with a complete stranger, most real sexual opportunities do not come without a cost. In the real world, a man rarely meets a woman on campus who offers him a no-cost hour of sex. A guy pursuing a friendly gal in a singles bar might, at the very least, have to pay for a few drinks and spend several hours demonstrating his charm and lack of psychological impediments. And what begins as a potential one-night stand might well turn into a longer relationship and even lead to marriage down the line.

  While men have lower standards than women when it comes to sex, men are not completely nondiscriminating. After the Eliot Spitzer scandal, for example, several media sources made the Emperor’s Club website available to the public. An inspection of the escorts on the site reveals two features they had in common: youth and beauty. All the highly priced escorts were uniformly physically attractive, and all were in their twenties. The women were probably several decades younger than their wealthy middle-aged male clients.

  In Bringing Down the House, Ben Mezrich wrote about a group of MIT nerds who won millions playing blackjack in Las Vegas. In researching the book, he interviewed a woman named April who had worked as a stripper at one of Las Vegas’s top gentlemen’s clubs, where she made several thousand dollars a night as a lap dancer. If she was willing to make additional “house calls,” she could earn up to $3,000 an hour. At the time of the interview, however, April was twenty-five years old and explained that she was no longer able to command as high a price for her company. As Mezrich put it, “She was already considered old in her line of work.”