How Sexy is Money?

Does money make us more attractive to potential partners? If so, how much?

Quite often I see small, rather physically unattractive men with very pretty girlfriends.

“He must be rich,” I think to myself when I see them.

What is actually the truth of such common opinions? How attractive is it really to have money?

To answer these exciting questions in the best possible way, we need to look at meaningful study results.

It is not easy to get reliable data on this subject. Simple surveys often do not tell the whole truth. Instead, respondents often say what is socially acceptable and what they think they have to say.

Only an experiment where the actions speak, where you see human nature in action, is truly meaningful. The French researchers Nicolas Gueguen and Lubomir Launy have set up exactly such an experiment that at least shows how money affects female to male attraction.

The experiment

Young men waited in a parked car near a well-known promenade on a sunny day in Vannes, France. When a suitable woman walked by, the men got out of the car and asked for a date. The key point in determining the influence of financial situation on dating success was that the experiment was conducted with different cars that differed significantly in value:

• Audi A5 Ambition Luxury (price EUR 58,000 or USD 70,632)
• A 1-year-old Renault Mégane (price EUR 24,000 or USD 29,227)
• A 15-year-old Renault 5 Super Campus (price EUR 800 or USD 974.24)

6 men participated. Each of them approved 30 women with each car.

The results

The results speak for themselves. Here are the success rates per car. What counts as success is when the man got the woman’s phone number:

• Audi A5 Ambition Luxury: 23.3%
• 1-year-old Renault Mégane: 12.8%
• 15-year-old Renault 5 Super Campus: 7.8%

Money seems to matter when you want to be attractive as a man.

Whether the same result would have been achieved with a questionnaire?

I doubt it.

I find this experiment particularly exciting because it shows the actual behavior of women in a real-life situation.

Evolutionary biologists agree that this behavior is normal. And you can’t blame women. It makes perfect evolutionary sense to prefer a partner with resources who can provide well for potential offspring.

Does money also make women more attractive?

A study published in Evolution and Human Behaviour found out that women are way more sensitive to a partner’s income than it is the other way around. The study used photos of men and women and added the income of the person that was rated.

The result is very interesting: while a 10x in income was enough for a man to move up two points on the scale of attractiveness, women needed a 10,000x to achieve the same increase in attractiveness.

Final Thoughts

As the described experiment shows, money counts as a man. However, calling women gold diggers, for this reason, is stupid. It is simply human nature. Men seem to place less value on the size of women’s wallets. Other things are much more important. I think you understand what I mean.

Thanks for reading!

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