[WestIndianArchie]

Can someone break this down?




The rival wears Prada: Luxury consumption as a female competition strategy

Evolutionary Psychology 12(3): 570-587
Liselot Hudders, Department of Communication Sciences, Ghent Universtity, Ghent, Belgium., [email protected]
Charlotte De Backer, Department of Communication Studies, Antwerp University, Antwerp, Belgium.
Maryanne Fisher, Department of Psychology, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
Patrick Vyncke, Department of Communication Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
ABSTRACT
Previous studies on luxury consumption demonstrated that men spend large sums of money on luxury brands to signal their mate value to women and, thus, increase their reproductive success. Although women also spend copious amounts of money on luxuries, research focusing on women’s motives for luxury consumption is rather scarce. Relying on costly signaling and intrasexual competition theory, the goal of the current study was to test whether female intrasexual competition in a mate attraction context triggers women’s spending on luxuries. The results of the first experiment reveal that an intrasexual competition context enhances women’s preferences for attractiveness enhancing, but not for non-attractiveness related luxuries such as a smartphone. This finding indicates that women may use luxury consumption as a self-promotion strategy during within-sex competitions, as these luxuries improve their advantages against same-sex rivals for mates. A follow-up study shows that compared to women who do not consume luxuries, women who do so are perceived as more attractive, flirty, young, ambitious, sexy, and less loyal, mature and smart by other women. These results suggest that luxury consumption may provide information about a women’s willingness to engage in sex, as well as her views about other women, and consequently, her success in intrasexual competitions.

http://www.epjournal.net/articles/the-ri...-strategy/

[Foolsgo1d]

Smartphones? Women dont buy them to look fancy in the eyes of men.

Look at women when a hot girl walks in. They're looking at what she wears. They know what men like.

[Lizard King]

I know a girl, early 20s, from Africa, Portuguese passport so can live and work in the UK, OK looking.

She uses social media to show how good her hair is, how new her handbag is, how flash her nails look, how much cash she is taking on holiday, etc..

My theory, is that she tries to present herself as high status so that she can justify a high status man(she works as a cleaner on minimum wage).

That fits in with the abstract in the OP doesn't it?

[hoopsy]

In my experience, excessive luxury consumption is correlated with bitchiness and high maintenance behavior.

[la_mode]

A woman showing off is celebrated, i.e. look at that self-confident woman showing off her opulent lifestyle. Same with a gay guy. They'll oftentimes use social media to boost their "swag factor".

A straight guy does this, people nearly cry. He'll be accused of trying to brag by other men, including some traditional alpha men (who believe men should be simple), lots of white knights, and women won't like it either.