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The Effect of Mate Value Discrepancy on Hypothetical Engagement Ring Purchases

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Jaime M. Cloud at Western Oregon University
Jaime M. Cloud
Madalyn H. Taylor
Madalyn H. Taylor
Madalyn H. Taylor
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Abstract and Figures

Few material goods entail as high a cost and carry as little practical value as an engagement ring. Despite their obvious signaling value, engagement ring expenditures have rarely been studied. The purpose of the current study was to experimentally manipulate a discrepancy in the physical attractiveness of romantic partners to determine its effect on hypothetical engagement ring purchases. We predicted that (1) men would purchase larger, more expensive engagement rings when imagining themselves mated to a more attractive rather than less attractive woman and (2) women would desire larger, more expensive engagement rings when imagining themselves mated to a less attractive rather than more attractive man. We further predicted a positive correlation between women’s self-ratings of attractiveness and the size and cost of the engagement ring women chose, regardless of target attractiveness. Results supported all three predictions. Data about the cost and quality of actual engagement rings was also collected to explore their correlations with age and attractiveness discrepancies in real-world couples; however, we failed to find a consistent pattern whereby more desirable women received more expensive and higher quality engagement rings. Results from the experimental portion of the current study show that men invest greater resources in attractive women and that increased resource investment can compensate for decreased physical attractiveness within the domain of women’s mate preferences.
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Effect of Mate Value Discrepancy on Hypothetical Engagement
Ring Purchases
Jaime M. Cloud
1
&Madalyn H. Taylor
1
Published online: 10 July 2018
#Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract
Few material goods entail as high a cost and carry as little practical value as an engagement ring. Despite their obvious signaling
value, engagement ring expenditures have rarely been studied. The purpose of the current study was to experimentally manip-
ulate a discrepancy in the physical attractiveness of romantic partners to determine its effect on hypothetical engagement ring
purchases. We predicted that (1) men would purchase larger, more expensive engagement rings when imagining themselves
mated to a more attractive rather than less attractive woman and (2) women would desire larger, more expensive engagement
rings when imagining themselves mated to a less attractive rather than more attractive man. We further predicted a positive
correlation between women’s self-ratings of attractiveness and the size and cost of the engagement ring women chose, regardless
of target attractiveness. Results supported all three predictions. Data about the cost and quality of actual engagement rings was
also collected to explore their correlations with age and attractiveness discrepancies in real-world couples; however, we failed to
find a consistent pattern whereby more desirable women received more expensive and higher quality engagement rings. Results
from the experimental portion of the current study show that men invest greater resources in attractive women and that increased
resource investment can compensate for decreased physical attractiveness within the domain of women’smatepreferences.
Keywords Assortative mating .Mate preferences .Physical attractiveness .Consumer behavior
Though the principles of evolutionary psychology have been
deployedtobetterunderstandgiftgivingbehavior(fora
review, see Saad and Gill 2003), relatively little work has
examined the purchase and bestowal of engagement rings
specifically. This is remarkable considering that engagement
rings are one of the most expensive gifts given and received.
According to The Knot’s 2017 Jewelry and Engagement
Study (BOnly 1 in 3,^2017), which surveyed over 14,000
engaged or recently married men and women from the USA,
couples spent an average of $6351 on an engagement ring. In
addition, a substantial percentage of engagements in the
American population—84% according to the Diamond
Information Center (Gassman 2007)—involves the purchase
of a diamond engagement ring. Engagement rings serve as an
honest signal of many traits (e.g., romantic commitment;
Zahavi 1975), but the focus of this paper is their resource-
signaling quality. The purpose of the current study was to
explore how discrepancies in the physical attractiveness of
romantic partners can be resolved by increased resource in-
vestment as signaled by an engagement ring.
A process of assortative mating characterizes most relation-
ships. Assortative mating refers to the fact that romantic part-
ners tend to be more similar to one another across a variety of
dimensions (e.g., intelligence, political orientation) than would
be predicted by chance (Watson et al. 2004). Of particular
relevance to the current study is the observation that most
romantic partners are roughly equivalent in mate value (Buss
1985; Buss and Barnes 1986). It is often the case that a mis-
match in the desirability of a given trait in one partner’s favor
is balanced by a mismatch in another trait in the other partner’s
favor so that the average desirability of both partners is com-
parable. For instance, an individual may be more physically
attractive than his or her partner. In such cases, the less attrac-
tive partner is expected to contribute other desirable traits (e.g.,
This research was presented at the 94
th
Annual Meeting of the Western
Psychological Association; Portland, OR and the 27
th
Annual Meeting of
the Human Behavior and Evolution Society; Columbia, MO.
*Jaime M. Cloud
cloudj@wou.edu
1
Psychological Sciences Department, Western Oregon University,
345 N. Monmouth Avenue, Monmouth, Oregon, USA
Evolutionary Psychological Science (2019) 5:22–28
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-018-0156-6
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... This was used to examine the possible effect of mate scarcity priming on engagement ring choice in women. Following Cloud and Taylor (2019) participants were asked, "If your partner were to propose to you after an extended period of dating, what is the smallest size of the engagement ring with which you would be satisfied in receiving?" Participants were shown five identical engagement rings that differed only by carat weight and cost, ranging from 0.50 carats ($500) to 1.50 carats ($9000), and chose one of the options. ...
... This study provides a better understanding of whether selfperceived mate availability influences women's expectations Evolutionary Psychological Science (2020) 6:188-194 surrounding engagement ring purchases as a putative cue to men's resource investment in long-term mateships. Using a novel engagement ring expectation measure (Cloud and Taylor 2019), results suggested that when women perceive mates to be abundant, they increase their expectations of cues to long-term investment by men, relative to when mates are scarcer. In other words, when the environment allows for increased mate choice and expression of mate preferences among women, they will increase their expectations for men's resource investment relative to environments in which mates are scarce. ...
Induced Mate Abundance Increases Women’s Expectations for Engagement Ring Size and Cost
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Research on some non-human species suggests that an abundance of reproductively viable males relative to females can increase female choosiness and preferences for longer-term mating and resource investment by males. Yet little research has explored the potential influence of mate availability upon women’s preferences for signals of men’s commitment and resource provisioning. Using an experimental mate availability priming paradigm, the present study examined whether women (N = 205) primed with either mate scarcity or abundance would differ in their expectations for engagement ring size and cost. Results demonstrated that women who were primed with the belief that good-quality mates are abundant in the population reported expecting a statistically-significantly larger and more expensive engagement ring relative to women primed with mate scarcity. Results suggest that women flexibly attune their expectations for signals of men’s investment based, in part, upon their perception of the availability of viable mates.
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... Kruger and Kruger 2018;Winegard et al. 2018), short-term mating aids (Sundie et al. 2011), and/or as indications of resources and provisioning capacity (e.g. Cloud and Taylor 2018;Hughes and Aung 2017). The extended phenotype approach also provides a novel theoretical framework for online dating behaviors and creative displays more generally, thus advancing synthesis between existing theory and empirical findings. ...
... Women's sexual ornaments and extended sexuality (i.e. the desire to mate despite fertility being at or near zero e.g. outside the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle or during pregnancy) evolved partly because they enhanced acquisition of male-delivered material benefits and services (Thornhill and Gangestad 2008; see also Cloud and Taylor 2018). Much like the beaver that constructs a dam to have an enlarged catchment area to harvest energy from the environment (Dawkins 1982), women select males not only to provide good genes for their offspring but also to act as "an enlarged catchment aid" that harvests energy from the environment to the benefit of the woman's offspring. ...
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