Hi, My Name is Wealthy: Women’s Dating Behaviors in Relation to the Perceived Wealth of Perspective Mates

It has been cross-culturally documented that women exhibit a preference for mateswho possess resources or traits that signal potential wealth. The majority of thisliterature relies on self reported mate preferences. Here we report on twoexperiments to test whether women’s willingness to date men is actually influencedby their perceived wealth. Online dating profiles were created to presentphotographs of men and information about their current bank account status (Study1), or to indirectly indicate their level of wealth (Study 2). In Study 1, the faces werepresented with alternating high and low bank account balances. We hypothesizedthat women who viewed men with high bank account values would evaluate them asmore desirable than women who viewed men with low bank account values. That is,they would be more likely to engage with him in an online conversation, meet withhim for a casual coffee, accept an invitation of a date, consider him for a one-nightstand, consider him for a short-term relationship, or consider him for a long-termrelationship. It was also hypothesized that women would rate the men with highbank account balances as more physically attractive than the men with the low bankaccount balances. The results generally do not support the hypotheses. In Study 2,we replaced bank account balances with indirect indicators of wealth. Our resultsindicate that women were significantly less interested in wealthier men as comparedto poorer men, possibly because the wealthy men may be perceived as bragging.Together, these studies suggest men’s wealth may not be as important to women ashas been previously considered, but further research is needed.