Peacocks and Porsches

Both may be male signalling devices, but it seems a peacock’s tail does a better job

What is common to a peacock’s tail and a Porsche? Well, for one, both are a form of conspicuous male signalling. For Darwin, the peacock’s tail was a difficult burden to explain in evolutionary terms: why, after all, would a male weigh himself down with a large tail which involves both a physical and physiological cost? Being chased by a predator, a male with a lighter tail was more likely to survive; attacked by infection, a peacock investing fewer resources in maintaining its glistening tail should have stood a better chance. The answer lay in a mechanism that Darwin had proposed: sexual selection. In peacocks, it turns out it is the female that prefers a bit of tail. A male with a long healthy tail is signalling that he is strong enough to carry such a burden and yet survive, while the glistening tail feathers signal a healthy immune system. Once such a process is established, it feeds off itself. The very fact females find long showy tails attractive implies that females choosing such mates are more likely to bear males that are similarly attractive to females.

But what does this have to do with Porsches? A new paper, Peacocks, Porsches and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System, published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests  ‘that conspicuous products, such as Porsches, can serve the same function for some men that large and brilliant feathers serve for peacocks.’ According to a university press release,  ‘The researchers state that women found a man who chose to purchase a flashy luxury product (such as a Porsche) more desirable than the same man who purchased a non-luxury item (such as a Honda Civic).’

However, unlike in the case of peacocks, there is a catch:  ‘Although women found the flashy guys more desirable for a date, the man with the Porsche was not preferred as a marriage partner. Women inferred from a man’s flashy spending that he was interested in uncommitted sex.’ In evolutionary terms, though, a key question remains unanswered: whose children do the women actually end up having?

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