Donate: It’s the Sexy Thing To Do

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Neuroworld readers are nothing if not cynical. So, when I wrote last week about people’s motivations for giving to charity — other than altruism, which I don’t entirely believe in — and I mentioned increasing one’s odds with the opposite sex, you all had one question: Would that work? Sure, people seem to believe that donating to charity will make them more attractive to the opposite sex… But are they right?

As one reader wrote in:

Now is it people donate because they think it will make them more attractive to the ladies or is it because it will actually make them more attractive to ladies?

Let’s explore…

The short answer is that, yes, studies seem to indicate that perceived altruism enhances attractiveness. This Evolutionary Psychology paper [PDF], for instance, finds that “cooperative behavior increases the perceived attractiveness of the cooperator.” (The same study also finds that people are more altruistic toward people who are attractive — but you probably already knew that.) Likewise, this paper [PDF] in the British Journal of Psychology finds evidence that women have a significant preference for altruistic mates, more so than men.

The question then — and I apologize for being a bit crass — is… well, I’ll let my correspondent ask it:

The key question is – am I better off spending $50k on a Porsche and showing a girl I have wealth and can take care of her, or am I better off spending $50k on Haitian children and showing a girl I have wealth, can take care of her, and that I care about other people.

I’m not sure it’s the key question, but it’s an interesting one.

The question, I think, would come down to where the marginal dollar would make more difference. Say the decision is between spending $20,000 versus $50,000 on either a car or a donation to charity. My guess is that the extra $30,000 spent on the car would be a more effective signal of desirability as a mate than an extra $30,000 given to a charity. This is for two reasons: 1) The $30,000-more-expensive car is much more obviously and physically different than the $30,000 bigger gift to charity. Once a gift to charity comes to be viewed as “large,” you probably don’t get a lot of extra points for exactly how large it is. 2) Making a big deal of the amount you give, after a point, decreases the signaling value of a gift to charity. If it starts to look like you gave to charity for reasons other than altruism (to receive some other form of reward, such as a tax break or social status), the signalling value of your gift becomes polluted — something Dan Ariely gets into in this paper [PDF].

My guess is that a big-enough donation to charity (say $10,000) plus a significant expenditure on conspicuous consumption (say $40,000 on the car) is roughly the optimal strategy.

Of course, this is all through the lens of trying to pursue the most cynical, amoral, selfish approach to charity possible. I’m not recommending this approach — just gaming it out.

And before anyone calls me sexist, it’s not just men who use altruism to signal to women — women also signal altruism to be more attractive to men. It just seems women care more than men about their partners being altruistic — which presumably says something good about women and bad about men. Though, I don’t think it has to be viewed as “good” or “bad.” These are just the predispositions we have, as humans, for a variety of evolutionary and sociological reasons.

Our motives in giving to charity, as in all things, are extremely complex. And what we expect to gain from an action isn’t always what we actually get. In this case, however, if a guy’s giving to charity to look more attractive to women — he’ll probably succeed. So, donate: It’s the sexy thing to do.