Biologists call “expensive signaling” to the strategies that animals develop to make a kind of self-promotion campaign : the lion’s mane, the nightingale’s song or the peacock’s tail are obvious examples of these tricks. The goal is none other than to attract the attention of potential sexual partners and pass on the genes.
Coinciding with the release of the brand new iPhone 6, psychologists from the University of Würzburg, in Germany, have published a study in the journal Letters on Evolutionary Science that applies this concept to human beings .
Because according to their conclusions, young single men on the lookout for sporadic relationships are more likely to acquire next-generation smartphones : it is their expensive signage, their particular peacock tail . Thus they proclaim that they have enough resources to own an item that could be bought at a lower price.
However, if the men were looking for a long-term partner, they expressed their inclination to acquire mid-range or low-end phones. “With this behavior they announce that they are saving for the future, which is attractive to women according to evolutionary theories of parental investment and sexual selection,” said Christine Henninghausen, co-author of the research, in which women were surveyed. 352 volunteers between the ages of 16 and 34.
As for women, psychologists have not detected any correlation between their preference for a certain model of smartphone and their sexual or sentimental desires. Surely, experts conjecture, because women’s conspicuous consumption habits are geared more towards competing with people of the same sex.
