Original ArticleSelf-control and honesty depend on exposure to pictures of the opposite sex in men but not women☆
Introduction
Extant research regarding mating motivation has shown that exposure to sexual cues can stimulate men's mating motivation, which leads to greater impulsivity (e.g., Baker and Maner, 2008, Chiou et al., 2015, Van den Bergh et al., 2008, Wilson and Daly, 2004). Self-control refers to control over one's thoughts, emotions, impulses, and behavior (Ainslie, 1975, Baumeister et al., 2007). Impulsivity has been considered and demonstrated as a key facet of low self-control (e.g., Chiou et al., 2015, Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990, Fujita and Han, 2009; also see Fujita, 2011, for a related review). Previous studies have indicated that low self-control is a determinant of increased dishonesty (Baumeister and Exline, 1999, Baumeister et al., 1994, Mead et al., 2009). In the current research, we showed that exposing men to pictures of sexually appealing women was associated with lower self-control and increased dishonesty.
According to the notion of parental investment (Miller, 2000, Trivers, 1972), men have some chance of reproductive success from short-term expenditures of mating effort (e.g., a single act of sexual intercourse), whereas successful reproduction typically requires more long-term parental investment by women (e.g., the burden of a nine-month gestation). Therefore, men are more likely to pursue short-term sexual strategies than women (Buss and Schmitt, 1993, Gangestad and Simpson, 2000). Prior research has shown that cues that activate mating motivation can facilitate particular perceptions, cognitions, and behaviors associated with reproductive success (e.g., Griskevicius et al., 2006, Maner et al., 2005, Roney, 2003). For example, Chiou et al. (2015) demonstrated that exposure to physically appealing women induced a “mating mindset” among male participants, as indexed by greater Stroop interference (i.e., longer reaction times) in naming the color of mating-related versus neutral terms in a modified Stroop task. Moreover, exposure to sexual cues can lead to greater impulsivity in intertemporal choice, i.e., a preference for immediacy (Baker and Maner, 2008, Chiou et al., 2015, Van den Bergh et al., 2008, Wilson and Daly, 2004). Thus, exposure to cues related to mating may serve to stimulate an escalation of present mating effort and promote the tendency toward immediate gratification among men. A mating mindset or sex motive activated by the availability of courtship-worthy targets (e.g., viewing pictures of women rated high on sexual attractiveness) should motivate men to behave impulsively.
In principle, impulsivity has been shown to reflect a tendency toward temporal discounting (i.e., a preference for smaller, immediate rewards over larger, distant ones; Frederick et al., 2002, Kirby and Maraković, 1995) and poor self-control (Arneklev et al., 1999, Denson et al., 2011, Jimura et al., 2013, Madden et al., 1997). Wilson and Daly (2004) showed that men were more likely to discount the future (i.e., greater impulsivity) after viewing pictures of attractive women. Van den Bergh et al. (2008) found that viewing female models dressed in swimsuits or lingerie led to greater discounting in male students (Study 1a). The authors also observed greater discounting when male participants physically examined bras compared to t-shirts (Study 1b). Moreover, keeping mating-related motivation or sexual impulses in check demands self-control (Baumeister et al., 1994, Baumeister et al., 2007, Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990). Chiou et al. (2015) showed that viewing pictures of physically attractive women was associated with low self-control in men. Thus, we contend that exposing men to stimuli that induce a mating or sex motive (e.g., pictures of sexually appealing women) may be associated with a state of lower self-control.
Honesty entails a typical self-control dilemma in which one must conform to moral rules while exerting control over amoral, selfish impulses (Baumeister et al., 1994, Carver and Scheier, 1981). Self-control has been referred to as “moral muscle,” corresponding to the ability to override selfish, antisocial impulses in favor of socially desirable norms (Baumeister & Exline, 1999). Thus, low self-control should be associated with increased dishonesty (Cochran et al., 1998, Mead et al., 2009). For example, Mead et al. (2009) showed that participants with low self-control exaggerated their performance for monetary gain on a self-scored test (i.e., dishonesty; Experiment 1) and showed greater susceptibility to cheating (Experiment 2) than their counterparts. Additionally, neuroimaging evidence has shown that both impulsivity (Hare et al., 2014, Harris et al., 2013) and dishonesty (Greene and Haidt, 2012, Greene and Paxton, 2009) involve control-related regions of the prefrontal cortex. Given that poor self-control is associated with decreased honesty, we hypothesized that men's greater impulsivity (i.e., a manifestation of lower self-control) induced by exposure to pictures of women rated as being sexy would prompt dishonest behavior.
In addition to the above-mentioned association between mating-induced impulsivity and dishonesty in men, the perspective of mate preference or mate attraction may also predict the connection between men's mating motivation and dishonesty. Over human evolutionary history, men and women have confronted different adaptive problems during sexual selection (Buss and Schmitt, 1993, Trivers, 1972). The notion of mate preference and empirical evidence indicate that men value cues to a woman's fertility such as youth, physical attractiveness, and waist-to-hip ratio (e.g., Buss, 1989, Kenrick and Keefe, 1992, Kenrick et al., 1990, Singh, 1993), whereas women value physical attractiveness (e.g., Buss and Schmitt, 1993, Frederick and Haselton, 2007, Little et al., 2011; also see Rodeheffer, Leyva, & Hill, 2016, for a related review) and economic resources (Buss, 1989, Buss, 1995, Dunn and Searle, 2010, Feingold, 1992, Landolt et al., 1995). According to the perspective of sexual strategies in mate choice, the mate preferences of one sex can affect the sexual strategy in the other (Buss, 1988, Buss, 1998, Chan, 2015). For example, mating motives activated by exposing participants to attractive opposite-sex photographs or sexual scenarios have been shown to prompt a variety of behaviors in human males but not in females. These experimentally induced behaviors include playing risky blackjack hands (Baker & Maner, 2008), acting in a nonconforming manner (Griskevicius et al., 2006), spending conspicuously (Griskevicius et al., 2007), donating more generously (Iredale, Van Vugt, & Dunbar, 2008), exhibiting heroic altruism (Griskevicius et al., 2007), and endorsing warring attitudes (Chang, Lu, Li, & Li, 2011), all of which are preferred by women (Chan, 2015, Kelly and Dunbar, 2001). These findings suggest that mating-related cues may heighten men's (but not women's) mating motivation, which motivates them to make choices or behave in a way that is desirable to women in sexual selection (i.e., for the purpose of mate attraction).
From an evolutionary perspective, people can often obtain resources at less cost in ancestral and current environments by acting dishonestly (Buss, 1999, Mazar et al., 2008). Activating men's mating motivation by situational cues (e.g., pictures of sexually appealing women) should motivate an increased desirability as a mating partner to women (Bäckman and Dixon, 1992, Chan, 2015, Salthouse, 1995). Given that dishonesty can serve as a low-cost and convenient shortcut to acquire resources, power, status, and reputation (Buss, 1994, Buss, 1999), men with a heightened mating motive may engage in dishonest behaviors to display preferred characteristics to women in order to promote mate attraction. For instance, to establish an advantage in female mate preference using a dishonest strategy, a man can exaggerate muscular strength which signals masculinity and dominance (Frederick & Haselton, 2007), claim physical fitness which signals health (Little et al., 2011), pretend to be a millionaire which signals abundant economic resources (Buss, 1989, Buss, 1998, Dunn and Searle, 2010, Pawlowski and Koziel, 2002), fake a graduate degree or cheat to get better grades which signal intelligence (Buss, 1998, Buss and Schmitt, 1993, Miller and Todd, 1998), or fake altruistic displays which signal status (Bird and Smith, 2005, Griskevicius et al., 2010). These signaled characteristics are all preferences of women in a mate.
However, recent advances in research on the connection between mating motivation in men and prosociality indicate that altruistic male behavior, in the form of “risky heroism”, can be triggered by sexual motives (Farthing, 2005, Griskevicius et al., 2007, Kelly and Dunbar, 2001, Sylwester and Pawlowski, 2011). Similarly, men are more likely to display altruism in the presence of an attractive member of the opposite sex, but the same is not true for women (Farrelly et al., 2007, Iredale et al., 2008). These findings do not contradict our predictions regarding the link between men's mating motivation and dishonest behavior from the viewpoint that dishonesty can serve as a tactic for projecting characteristics preferred by women in the context of sexual selection. This is because physical attractiveness cannot be increased quickly (Chan, 2015, Taylor et al., 2007). Prosocial or altruistic acts incur some costs (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003, Henrich, 2009). Therefore, when mating motivation is activated, men might be motivated to increase their attractiveness in other ways. One alternative way for men to increase their desirability as a mating partner is to accumulate resources, acquire status, or acquire desirable characteristics using a dishonesty strategy (Buss, 1999, Mazar et al., 2008). Thus, exposure to stimuli that activate men's mating motivation (e.g., pictures of sexually appealing women) might be associated with their increased dishonesty.
In sum, prior work has demonstrated that stimuli inducing mating or sex motivation can engender greater impulsivity (i.e., lower self-control) among men (Baker and Maner, 2008, Chiou et al., 2015, Van den Bergh et al., 2008). Building on the association that low self-control is linked to increased dishonesty (Baumeister and Exline, 1999, Mead et al., 2009) and on the notion that men's dishonesty may serve as a tactic to acquire preferred characteristics to women in sexual selection, we provide the first experimental evidence that exposing men to pictures of women rated as being sexy is associated with increased dishonesty.
Section snippets
Methods
In total, 104 heterosexual undergraduates (52 females, 52 males; mean age = 20.8 ± 1.4 years) attending a university in southern Taiwan participated in this experiment for extra course credit. The sample size was determined by calculating the number of participants required to satisfy the omnibus F-test (number of groups = 4) under the following conditions: α = 0.05, ω2 = 0.10 (a small association; Cohen, 1988), and power (1 − β) = 0.80. Thus, the required sample size was 104 (Kirk, 2012; p. 925). Sex appeal
Methods
A total of 74 heterosexual male undergraduates (mean age = 20.6 years, SD = 1.1) were recruited from a university in southern Taiwan to participate in a study that ostensibly examined impression formation and visual attention. Participants were randomly assigned to groups in this one-factor (sex appeal: high vs. low), between-subjects experiment. The sample size was determined according to the number participants required to satisfy the omnibus F-test (number of groups = 2) under the following
Methods
Ninety heterosexual men (mean age = 29.6 years, SD = 6.3) were recruited from the larger community in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Participants were randomly assigned to the high sex appeal, low sex appeal, or control (receiving no sex appeal manipulation) conditions. A non-intervention control condition may provide the baseline assessment of cheating. The sample size was determined according to the number of participants required to satisfy the omnibus F-test (number of groups = 3) under the following
Experiment 4: a pre-registered replication study examining whether exposure to pictures of sexy women is associated with low self-control, leading to increased cheating in men
This experiment aimed to replicate the finding that exposure to pictures of sexy women can lead to a state of low self-control in men, indexed by greater Stroop interference, which in turn leads to more cheating behavior. We pre-registered our study hypotheses, detailed methods and procedures, and the complete data analysis plan via the Open Science Framework repository (https://osf.io/fuhm8/). Given that the pre-registration was done prior to data collection, the possibility of post hoc
General discussion
We conducted four studies and found support for the hypothesis that lower self-control induced by exposure to pictures of sexually appealing women (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) is associated with tendencies toward dishonesty (Experiment 2) and cheating (Experiments 3 and 4) among men. The findings may provide a viable explanation for a well-known phenomenon, namely, the connection between male criminality and their attempts to gain reproductive access to women (Daly and Wilson, 1988, Gottfredson
Declarations of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions for conducting a pre-registered replication study that brings greater strength to the evidence of our first three experiments.
References (107)
- et al.
Income tax evasion: A theoretical analysis
Journal of Public Economics
(1972) - et al.
Risk-taking as a situationally sensitive male mating strategy
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2008) - et al.
Being of two minds: Ultimatum offers under cognitive constraints
Journal of Economic Psychology
(2011) Physically-attractive males increase men's financial risk-taking
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2015)- et al.
In broad daylight, we trust in God! Brightness, the salience of morality, and ethical behavior
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(2013) - et al.
Beauty against tobacco control: Viewing photos of attractive women may induce a mating mindset, leading to reduced self-control over smoking among male smokers
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2015) Attitudes toward heroic and nonheroic physical risk takers as mates and as friends
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2005)The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: Credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2009)- et al.
Modeling myopic decisions: Evidence for hyperbolic delay discounting within subjects and amounts
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(1995) The sense of effort
Current Opinion in Psychology
(2016)
Sex differences in intra-sex variations in human mating tactics: An evolutionary approach
Ethology and Sociobiology
Too tired to tell the truth: Self-control resource depletion and dishonesty
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Mate choice turns cognitive
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Social benefits of luxury brands as costly signals of wealth and status
Evolution and Human Behavior
The impact of traits offered in personal advertisements on response rates
Evolution and Human Behavior
Impulse control and underlying functions of the left DLPFC mediate age-related and age-independent individual differences in strategic social behavior
Neuron
The heritability of attractiveness
Current Biology
Is working memory capacity task dependent?
Journal of Memory and Language
Specious reward: A behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control
Psychological Bulletin
Evaluating the dimensionality and invariance of “lower self-control”
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Psychological compensation: A theoretical framework
Psychological Bulletin
Virtue, personality, and social relations: Self-control as the moral muscle
Journal of Personality
Losing control: How and why people fail at self-regulation
Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource?
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The strength model of self-control
Current Directions in Psychological Science
Crime and punishment: An economic approach
Journal of Political Economy
Signaling theory, strategic interaction, and symbolic capital
Current Anthropology
The evolution of human intrasexual competition: Tactics of mate attraction
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating
Evolutionary psychology: A new paradigm for psychological science
Psychological Inquiry
Sexual strategies theory: Historical origins and current status
The Journal of Sex Research
Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind
Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating
Psychological Review
Stereotype threat affects financial decision making
Psychological Science
Publication bias and the limited strength model of self-control: Has the evidence for ego depletion been overestimated?
Frontiers in Psychology
A series of meta-analytic tests of the depletion effect: Self-control does not seem to rely on a limited resource
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Attention and self-control: A control theory approach to human behavior
The face that launched a thousand ships: The mating–warring association in men
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Think abstractly, smoke less: A brief construal-level intervention can promote self-control, leading to reduced cigarette consumption among current smokers
Addiction
Academic dishonesty and low self-control: An empirical test of a general theory of crime
Deviant Behavior
Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences
Cheating, emotions, and rationality: An experiment on tax evasion
Experimental Economics
Are social value orientations expressed automatically? Decision making in the dictator game
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Homicide
Understanding impulsive aggression: Angry rumination and reduced self-control capacity are mechanisms underlying the provocation-aggression relationship
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Depletion makes the heart grow less helpful: Helping as a function of self-regulatory energy and genetic relatedness
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Effect of manipulated prestige-car ownership on both sex attractiveness ratings
British Journal of Psychology
Altruists attract
Evolutionary Psychology
The nature of human altruism
Nature
Cited by (15)
Exposure to nature may induce lower discounting and lead to healthier dietary choices
2019, Journal of Environmental PsychologyCitation Excerpt :Future research should examine whether exposure to nature can be effectively applied to exercise behavior (e.g., Mackay & Neill, 2010), or investigate potential mediating roles between the natural environment and behavior change, such as frustration tolerance (Cackowski & Nasar, 2003) and mood (Nisbet & Zelenski, 2011). Finally, dietary control or weight loss, like other impulse-control behaviors, such as substance abuse (Kirby & Petry, 2004), pathological gambling (Alessi & Petry, 2003), alcohol consumption (Field, Christiansen, Cole, & Goudie, 2007), smoking (Chiou, Wu, & Chang, 2013; Chiou et al., 2015; Chiou & Wu, 2017), video game addiction (Buono et al., 2017), and honesty (Chiou, Wu, & Cheng, 2017; Mead, Baumeister, Gino, Schweitzer, & Ariely, 2009), require continuous self-control efforts involving delayed gratification across diverse contexts and over time. Whether the effect of exposure to nature on the ability to delay gratification (as manifested by lower discounting or greater self-control) could be generalized to other impulse-related behaviors is worthy of further investigation.
Evolutionary association between self-awareness and self-control
2023, Towards Inclusive Societies: Psychological and Sociological PerspectivesMoral Competence and Self-Control: The Moderating Role of Personality Traits
2023, Studia PsychologicaEffect of traditional Chinese medicine massage on physical and mental health of middle-aged and elderly women
2023, Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering ReviewsConsumer Response toward Sexual Advertisements in the Context of Access-Based Consumption
2023, Journal of AdvertisingThe Effectiveness of Mating Induction on Men’s Financial Risk-Taking: Relationship Experience Matters
2022, Frontiers in Psychology
- ☆
Funding was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (project no. MOST 105-2410-H-110-039-MY2).