Post Date December, 03 2023
Consumer psychology refers to the psychological activities that consumers experience when searching, choosing, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services related to themselves. In addition to following the crowd, seeking differences, comparing and being realistic, the latest research also found that male consumption psychology is affected by the gender ratio.
A new study from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota in the United States shows that the gender ratio in the environment can have a significant impact on men's economic behavior. If a man believes that there are fewer women in his environment than men, he will become more impulsive, less concerned about his savings, and more willing to use credit cards for consumption. The article of Carlson College, entitled "The economic result of too many men: the impact of gender ratio on savings, borrowing and consumption", was published in the Journal of Personality and social psychology in January this year.
"We see that in other animals, when females are scarce, males become more aggressive. They will compete more fiercely to get mates," explained Vladas Griskevicius, assistant professor of marketing at Carlson College and the lead author of the article. How do humans compete to obtain a mate? In all cultures, you can find that men are most accustomed to obtaining a mate through money, status, and possessions
In order to verify the idea that gender ratio will affect economic decision-making, Griskevicius and other researchers first asked the subjects to read some news about the local gender ratio, and then asked them how much money they would save from their wages each month and how much money they would borrow from credit cards to spend. When the men in the experiment saw news that there were fewer women in their region, their willingness to save money decreased by 42%, while their willingness to borrow money from credit cards increased by 84%.
In another experiment, the researchers asked the subjects to look at photos of three different groups of people: one with more males, one with more females, and one with similar gender ratios. After reading, the researchers asked the experimental subjects if they were willing to receive $20 the next day or $30 as compensation after a month. Men who see fewer photos of women are more willing to settle for $20 the next day.
Classic economics holds that humans, unlike animals, make decisions about choices after thinking. Griskevicius said, "In fact, we have many similarities with animals. Some of our behaviors are highly reflective and subconscious. When we see more males than females around us, we unconsciously change our desires, behaviors, and entire psychological processes
Interestingly, the gender ratio does not affect women's choice of economic behavior, but will affect women's expectations of how men spend money in courtship. After reading reports of more men than women, women expect men to spend more money on candlelight dinners, Valentine's Day gifts, and engagement rings. When there are fewer women, women feel that men should put in more effort to pursue them, "Griskevicius commented.
To test whether these experimental conclusions are true in life, researchers calculated the gender ratio, credit card holding rate and consumer debt level in more than 120 cities in the United States. Consistent with their expectations, credit card holdings and consumer debt levels are also higher in places with more single men. For example, although Columbus, Georgia, is no more than 100 miles away from McCann, the average debt of consumers in Columbus with a gender ratio of 1.18 is $3479 more than in McCann with a gender ratio of 0.78.
Previous studies have shown that seeing attractive women in advertisements can make men more aggressive or interested in conspicuous consumption. Griskevicius' research shows that gender ratio - whether a woman appears alone or surrounded by a group of men - also has a great impact on men's reaction. Griskevicius believes that the impact of gender ratio on economic behavior is only the tip of the iceberg, and its significance is far beyond the scope of marketing. He cited other studies and said that the high proportion of men is strongly positively related to extreme behavior in social life: the problem caused by the imbalance of gender ratio is not only related to money - violence and survival are the bigger problems we face.
