When Women Are Scarce: Men Become Impulsive, Save Less and Increase Borrowing

The perception that women are scarce leads men to become impulsive, save less, and increase borrowing, according to new research from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

“How do humans compete for access to mates? What you find across cultures is that men often do it through money, through status and through products,” says Vladas Griskevicius, an assistant professor of marketing at Carlson and lead author of the study.

To test their theory that the sex ratio affects economic decisions, the researchers had participants read news articles that described their local population as having more men or more women. They were then asked to indicate how much money they would save each month from a paycheck, as well as how much they would borrow with credit cards for immediate expenditures. When led to believe women were scarce, the savings rates for men decreased by 42 percent. Men were also willing to borrow 84 percent more money each month.

In another study, participants saw photo arrays of men and women that had more men, more women, or were neutral. After looking at the photographs, participants were asked to choose between receiving some money tomorrow or a larger amount in a month. When women were scarce in the photos, men were much more likely to take an immediate $20 rather than wait for $30 in a month's time.

According to Griskevicius, participants were unaware that sex ratios were having any effect on their behavior. Merely seeing more men than women automatically led men to simply be more impulsive and want to save less while borrowing more to spend on immediate purchases.

“Economics tells us that humans make decisions by carefully thinking through our choices; that we’re not like animals,” he says. “It turns out we have a lot in common with other animals. Some of our behaviors are much more reflexive and subconscious. We see that there are more men than women in our environment and it automatically changes our desires, our behaviors, and our entire psychology.”

Sex Ratios Affect Expectations of Women

While sex ratios do not influence the financial choices women make, they do shape women’s expectations of how men should spend their money when courting. After reading a news article informing women that there are more men than women, women expected men to spend more on dinner dates, Valentine’s gifts, and engagement rings.

“When there’s a scarcity of women, women felt men should go out of their way to court them,” adds Griskevicius.

In a male-biased environment, men also expected they would need to spend more in their mating efforts.

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When Women Are Scarce: Men Become Impulsive, Save Less and Increase Borrowing

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