What If the Rival Drives a Porsche?

Abstract

Previous research found that men conspicuously consume luxury products to attract a mate and to signal their mate value. However, these studies have yet neglected to investigate the function of male conspicuous consumption in same-sex competition. Given that intersexual selection and intrasexual selection are closely related processes, it stands to reason that a further function of male conspicuous consumption could be to impress and deter same-sex rivals. An 2 (intrasexual competition context vs. control) Â 2 (conspicuous luxury vs. inconspicuous nonluxury) between-subjects experimental study conducted with an Amazon Mechanical Turk sample (N ¼ 160) revealed that men reported both higher liking of and an intent to purchase a conspicuous luxury car compared to an inconspicuous nonluxury car due to increased feelings of social status. This effect was stronger in the intrasexual competition than in the control context. An additional perception study using a single-factor between-subjects design (conspicuous luxury vs. inconspicuous nonluxury car) among German men (N ¼ 405) indicated that male participants rated a man who displayed a conspicuous luxury car more as a rival and mate poacher and less as a friend. They further perceived him to be superior on various mate value characteristics (i.e., attractiveness, intelligence, ambition, and status) and rated him as more oriented toward short-term mating. In sum, our findings add to previous research in the field of evolutionary consumer psychology by suggesting that male conspicuous consumption of luxuries may also serve a function in male-male competition. Relative to women, men are more likely to purchase and register conspicuous sports cars in the United States and cars of well-known luxury brands (Bowling, 2013;Macesich, 2014). Previous research has demonstrated that men may use these luxury cars to impress women, given that they may function as a signal of mate value (Griskevicius et al., 2007). And indeed, a man who was seated in a luxury car was perceived as more attractive by women compared to the same man seated in a nonluxury car (Dunn & Searle, 2010). Hence, men appear to use showy spending to attract women in intersexual competition contexts. Sundie et al. (2011) further revealed that men's flaunting of luxury goods signals their desirability as a shortterm (rather than long-term) mate. In addition, the study of Saad and Vongas (2009) indicated that men who drove a luxury sports car yielded higher testosterone levels compared to when they drove a nonluxury car. Moreover, Saad and Vongas found that male testosterone levels also rose when confronted with other men who displayed luxury (vs. nonluxury goods) in the presence of a female confederate. These latter results suggest that intrasexual competition processes may also incite men's

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“…Women, on the other hand, reported to be more jealous when the rival was physically attractive. This confirms that heterosexual men and women will be particularly vigilant of those rivals possessing the attributes that they think the opposite sex values (Fink et al 2014;Hennighausen et al 2016). Because jealousy predicts mate-retention behaviours (Davis et al 2018), we predict that compared to men, women will report higher intentions to use mate-retention behaviours when the rival is described as attractive.…”

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