Valuing Love
Common Cents: Bank Account Structure and Couples' Relationship Dynamics
Jenny Olson et al.
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
When a romantic relationship becomes serious, partners often confront a foundational decision about how to organize their personal finances: pool money together or keep things separate? In a six-wave longitudinal experiment, we investigated whether randomly assigning engaged or newlywed couples to merge their money in a joint bank account increases relationship quality over time. Whereas couples assigned to keep their money in separate accounts or to a no-intervention condition exhibited the normative decline in relationship quality across the first two years of marriage, couples assigned to merge money in a joint account sustained strong relationship quality throughout. The effect of bank account structure on relationship quality is multiply determined. We examine -- and find support for -- three potential mechanisms using both experimental and correlational methods: merging finances 1) improves how partners feel about how they handle money, 2) promotes financial goal alignment, and 3) sustains communal norm adherence (e.g., responding to each other's needs without expectations of reciprocity). While prior research has documented a correlation between financial interdependence and relationship quality, our research offers the first experimental evidence that increasing financial interdependence helps newlyweds preserve stronger relationship quality throughout the newlywed period and potentially beyond.
Functionally Calibrating Life Satisfaction: The Case of Mating Motives and Self-Perceived Mate Value
Ahra Ko et al.
Journal of Happiness Studies, February 2023, Pages 651-675
Abstract:
Extending the growing literature on adaptive functionality of inner experiential states, we take the approach that life satisfaction functions as a part of a psychological system that monitors current and potential achievement on important goals. From this perspective, life satisfaction is sensitively calibrated to how well one is moving toward success on important goals, thereby providing useful information for, and potentially motivating, subsequent goal-facilitating action. Focusing on mating goals, we investigated whether currently active and important mating goals shape the extent to which life satisfaction is sensitively and selectively calibrated by goal-specific cues of potential mating success -- self-perceived mate value. As hypothesized, because most individuals (eventually) seek long-term committed relationships, self-perceived long-term mate value predicted life satisfaction for men and women regardless of relationship status. In contrast, and also as hypothesized, self-perceived short-term mate value predicted life satisfaction only for individuals with short-term casual mating goals -- single uncommitted men (Studies 1, 2 A, and 2B), individuals dispositionally motivated toward short-term relationships (Studies 2 A and 2B), and single uncommitted women for whom short-term mating motivation was experimentally engaged, enabling causal inference (Study 3). Results support a functional conceptualization of life satisfaction, showing that currently active mating goals can shape the extent to which goal-specific self-perceived mate value predicts life satisfaction.
Discounting for Money, Food, and Sex, over the Menstrual Cycle
Benjamin Vincent et al.
Evolutionary Psychological Science, March 2023, Pages 71-81
Abstract:
Sexual desire, physical activity, economic choices and other behaviours fluctuate over the menstrual cycle. However, we have an incomplete understanding of how preferences for smaller sooner or larger later rewards (known as delay discounting) change over the menstrual cycle. In this pre-registered, cross-sectional study, Bayesian linear and quadratic binomial regression analyses provide compelling evidence that delay discounting does change over the menstrual cycle. Data from 203 naturally cycling women show increased discounting (preference for more immediate rewards) mid-cycle, which is at least partially driven by changes in fertility. This study provides evidence for a robust and broad-spectrum increase in delay discounting (Cohen's h ranging from 0.1 to 0.4) around the fertile point in the menstrual cycle across multiple commodities (money, food, and sex). We also show, for the first time, that discounting changes over the menstrual cycle in a pseudo-control group of 99 women on hormonal contraception. Interestingly, such women increase their discounting of sex toward the end of the menstrual phase -- possibly reflecting a prioritisation of bonding-related sexual activity before menstrual onset.
No effects of exposure to women's fertile window body scents on men's hormonal and psychological responses
James Roney et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do men respond to women's peri-ovulatory body odors in functional ways? Prior studies reported more positive changes in men's testosterone and cortisol after exposure to women's scents collected within the putative fertile window (i.e., cycle days when conception is possible) compared to comparison odors, and also psychological priming effects that were differentially larger in response to the fertile window odors. We tested replication of these patterns in a study with precise estimation of women's ovulatory timing. Both axillary and genital scent samples were collected from undergraduate women on six nights spaced five days apart. Here, we tested men's responses to a subset of these samples that were chosen strategically to represent three cycle regions from each of 28 women with confirmed ovulation: the follicular phase prior to the start of the fertile window, the fertile window, and the luteal phase. A final sample of 182 men were randomly assigned to each smell one scent sample or plain water. Saliva samples were collected before and after smelling to assess changes in testosterone and cortisol, and psychological measures of both sexual priming and social approach motivation were assessed after stimulus exposure. Planned comparisons of fertile window to other stimuli revealed no statistically significant effects for any dependent variable, in spite of sufficient power to detect effect sizes reported in prior studies. Our findings thus failed to replicate prior publications that showed potentially adaptive responses to women's ovulatory odors. Discussion addresses the implications of these findings for the broader question of concealed ovulation in humans.