Week 1: Spending & Saving

Week 1: Spending & Saving > Optional: A Penny Saved Is a Partner Earned > A Penny Saved is a Partner Earned: The Romantic Appeal of Savers

• Today I’m going to be talking a little bit about my research which looks at the relative desirability of saving versus spending in romantic relationships.
• We want to dress up and maybe spend a little bit more money on a nice outfit, or a nice vehicle, a nice restaurant.
• So there is some research in consumer behavior and marketing that suggests that when men in particular are motivated by romantic attraction, they tend to show a greater willingness to spend on expensive flashy items and less so on less flashy, inconspicuous items.
• Well, I’m going to turn that conventional wisdom on its head and argue that saving money is actually more desirable in a romantic partner than spending money.
• So in my own research, I look at the other side of spending, which is the saving, and whether or not that is more desirable in a mate.
• Second, there are a lot of dimensions to being what I term saver or a spender.
• Saving up for a luxurious vacation is very different than saving up for a down payment on the home.
• So in my own work, I focus on just the simple label of being a saver or spender so that later in my future work I can look at these other kinds of dimensions.
• So in my work, I’m going to argue that saving is more desirable because of perceptions of general self-control.
• So I’m going to argue that savers are more desirable than spenders because of the self-control.
• So participants were randomly assigned to view the profile of someone that said I’m a saver or a spender.
• So for the first experiment, I randomly assign people to view someone that said that they would spend $250 of $1,000 windfall.
• Consistent with my theorizing, I find that the person who was going to spend less and essentially save more of that windfall was perceived as more desirable than the person who was going to spend a little bit more.
• I also included a variety of different ways of explaining my saving and spending habits- so I love saving, I hate saving, I love spending, hate spending, I find it hard to save, I find it hard to spend- to again, test the robustness of the effect.
• What I find is that regardless of how someone expresses their habits, saving was more attractive than the control and spending was less attractive than the control.
• So now the next question is, well, why? Why are savers more desirable than spenders? And so the next couple experiments I looked at perceptions of general self-control.
• It’s possible that savers might be seen as less materialistic and as having greater future financial viability.
• What I find is that it is indeed perceptions of general self-control which predicts the effect of spending habits on attractiveness above and beyond these other alternative explanations.
• How romantically attractive do you find this person? You know, and I find that savers are perceived as more romantically attractive because they’re perceived as having greater general self-control.
• Saving may actually signal, again, perceptions of greater self control, which have direct implications on outward appearance.
• Again, it’s possible that savers might be perceived as superior on all sorts of dimensions.
• Maybe savers are not only more physically appealing, but they’re also more fun and exciting and humorous and intelligent.
• So one dimension in which savers should not exceed spenders on is excitement.
• Consistent with the self-control explanation, I find that savers, again, the exact same photo labeled saver, was perceived as physically more attractive than the exact same photo labeled spender.
• Savers were perceived as significantly less exciting, consistent with the self-control explanation.
• So there’s going to be situations in which savers might not be preferred.
• So when you think about savers, you think longer term, marriage.
• Because savers have the advantage on physical appeal, but a large deficit on the excitement, I didn’t expect to find a difference there.
• In situations in which we’re thinking in terms of a short term fling, saving is not more desirable.
• I find that people who are more likely to experience boredom and really don’t like predictability, they also do not prefer the saver.
• You might be wondering, well, how am I going to know this about somebody unless they explicitly tell me? Is there are a situation in which maybe I’m going out for the evening and I want to be able to identify who’s a saver or a spender in the wild? And so I’m going to argue that it is possible to identify people’s general spending habits simply by looking at them and without any kind of verbal communication.
• I had them first complete a getting-to-know-you survey in which they privately identified themselves as a saver or a spender.
• Then I told them that we were going to do a person perception task in which they were going to look around the room and guess whether or not every other person in that room was a saver or a spender.
• My research finds that saving not only has obvious financial benefits, it also has surprising interpersonal benefits.
• So savers are more desirable both in terms of romantic appeal and physical appeal because of their perceived greater self-control.
• Finally, of course, there are situations in which savers may not be preferred to spenders, situations which people are craving excitement or simulation.
• So the last thing I want to leave you with is kind of the mantra for frugality which is savor the saver.