Surely who we choose for a sexual partner is based on our conscious preferences, right? Perhaps not as much as you think.
Apparently, the power of the subconscious is so substantial that male preference for romantic partners is dependent on how much change ($) we have in our pockets at the time of evaluating a mate for selection.
In a brilliant experimental manipulation, Nelson and Morrison (2005) found that male preference for ideal weight of a romantic partner actually depends on whether we have money on our person when we are asked the question. The inspiration for their research came from the observation of cross cultural differences in male preferences for the ideal weight in a romantic partner. While there are human universals in attractive mate attributes (youth, body symmetry, and youthful facial features for men; for women social dominance, a material resources, height and prominent cheekbones are attractive across cultures) body weight in women does not hold a standard pattern across cultures. In lower socio-economic-status (SES) cultures the ideal weight is heavier than in higher SES cultures. Their explanation for this phenomena came from evolutionary psychology which argues that heavier weight is a sign of resource abundance, while very thin physiques communicate resource scarcity.
The researchers wondered: if the reason behind cross-cultural differences in ideal body weight preferences in women for men was actually perception of resource abundance versus scarcity, could it be shown at the individual level? That is, they wondered if the cross-cultural differences were actually an aggregated manifestation of individual level preferences. The majority of individuals in lower SES cultures experience resource scarcity, and if their preferences at the individual level were influenced by their perceptions of a lack of resources, this might manifest as a cultural phenomenon.

To test this thesis, they devised a simple experiment. They simply placed participants in a study where they first  asked men if they had any money on their person (making their immediate monetary resources salient to them) and then they asked a series of questions related to mate preferences, one of which was about the ideal weight of a romantic partner. In analyzing the results, they split the participants into two groups: one that had money on them during the experiment, and one that had no money on them at the time. The results were striking.
Men who had no money on them during the experiment preferred heavier than average women, and men who had money in their pockets during the experiment preferred lighter than average women. But wait! Don’t we know what we like? Aren’t our preferences stable (as rational economic theory argues)? If I’m rational, if I’m consciously making all of my choices, why would my preferences for weight in a sexual partner be dependent on whether I’ve got a few bucks in my pocket or not? (Note that this finding was replicated across 4 experiments manipulating both money and hunger as measures of resource scarcity (if you’re wondering, hungry men prefer heavier women too)).
If you’ve read this blog before, you must know where I’m going. I’m going to argue that this is additional evidence of the power of our subconscious on our behavior, and I’m gong to argue to that we are all largely unaware of the ubiquity of this influence. If you know me, you know I’m also going to argue that this is strong evidence of why we can’t rely on traditional research methods to understand why consumer’s like what they like. We can’t rely on self-reported measures from consumers to tell us why they do what they do – we simply don’t have conscious access to all of the influences on our behavior, and therefore we cannot report them via traditional research methods.
But I want to take this argument one step further. Let’s take this to the level of the ethics and responsibility of marketing and market research.
As market researchers we have a responsibility.
We have a responsibility to our clients who are relying on our results for the viability of their businesses. To the consumer, we have a responsibility to be providing the right information to our clients so companies can create products and services that are truly valued by consumers. Essentially our responsibility is to get the right product, with the right message to the right consumers in the right way. So, if market research is intended to figure out what consumers want and why, and the industry is largely relying on self-reported measures from consumers to tell us why they like what they like and do what they do, then we are in essence laying the foundation for profound consumer dissatisfaction.
This brings us to the conclusion that we have a larger responsibility here. As market researchers, we have a responsibility to understand consumer preferences at the subconscious level. We have a responsibility to advance this industry in its methods and its thought leadership in order to understand the true motivations behind consumer preferences. Only then can we expect to be connecting brands with consumers at a meaningful emotional level. Only then can we expect to be producing products that are truly desired by the market. Only then can we feel satisfied in the job we are doing for our clients and our industry.
We have a responsibility to understand, measure and communicate the power of the subconscious on behavior.