Researcher at St Andrews University have proved once and for all that it pays to look good.
Extensive study has revealed that people who think they are more attractive are less likely to offer to pay when out on dates.
The results suggest good-looking women are most likely to sit back and allow their date to pick up the tab.
Psychologists have long suspected that attractiveness could play a role in preferences for who should foot the bill for a dinner date.
Dr Michael Stirrat, from the university, said, “We predicted that attractive people would show less willingness to pay because people that are more attractive bring more to the table literally in the dating market.”
Dr Stirrat and his colleagues were investigating the role of “food provisioning” in humans. Commonly used as part of the courting behaviour in the animal kingdom, in most species it is the male who provides for the female.
The researchers also predicted that women would prefer to accept food from the best, more attractive, candidates and be less willing to obligate themselves to the less attractive ones.
They thought men would prefer to offer food to the better-looking women and hold on to their resources when with less attractive females.
Hypothetical blind dates were set up and participants asked how they would prefer the bill to be paid for. About half preferred to split the bill regardless of sex, although more men than women preferred to pay themselves.
In line with predictions, both men and women who consider themselves highly attractive were less inclined to pay for the meal on a blind date.
However, Dr Stirrat cautioned that any men preferring a cheap date may still find the going tough.
“Men overall reported a much greater willingness to pay for the meal than the women, consistent with social norms in dating,” he said. “Women almost never indicated that they would pay.”
A new research paper covering the findings and titled The Effect of Attractiveness on Food Sharing Preferences in Human Mating Markets is published in Evolutionary Psychology.
Photo by Flickr user jonathanb1989.