If you want to win the object of your affection, an extravagant gift that has no resale value is the way to go.
That's not the opinion of a battle-weary veteran of the dating scene. It's the conclusion of a mathematical model created by researchers at University College London.
Dating obviously involves gifts, and not just among humans. Gift-giving also appears in the mating rituals of some insect species. A team of applied mathematicians created a sequential calculation as a model of dating. The new study, designed to explore the role of gift-giving in courtship, appears online in the biological science journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
According to the model's creator, Robert Seymour, a math professor at the university, this model reduces dating to a collection of numbers.
The researchers assigned points to an array of courtship behaviors, including gift-giving. The computer considered the hypothetical facts, mulled over a few variables and calculated which behaviors would result in the highest score for the imaginary male or female dater.
This is what applied mathematicians do. They look at these kinds of outcomes and interpret them in a biological framework.
Because the goal was to understand the role of gift-giving, the researchers varied the type of gift the man could give. (Political correctness aside, it was a given that the man was the pursuer and gift-giver.)
In the model, a man chooses a worthless, valuable or extravagant gift. Valuable gifts might include diamonds or appliances, expensive items that have intrinsic value in that they are useful and can fetch a good price if resold. Extravagant gifts, on the other hand, would be something like dinner at a fancy restaurant, tickets to a Broadway show or a moonlit serenade. The value of these gifts is just in the experience.
The model showed that extravagant gifts had the highest score for both men and women. In Seymour's interpretation of the results, women feel confident that they have found a strong and committed mate when they receive an extravagant gift. And men avoid gold-diggers by giving only gifts that have no intrinsic value.
"In order to create trust, it has to work both ways," Seymour says. "The male signals his commitment by giving a costly gift, (but) the male has to avoid a female who will take his assets and then say 'get lost.' "
Would flesh-and-blood women really prefer a horse-drawn carriage ride to a diamond? Relationship experts have mixed feelings about whether the model's insights translate to real life.
Linda Carter, a couples therapist and director of family studies at New York University's child studies center, sees some truth there. "The more the energy, cost, extravagance - the attention - that goes into (a gift), I think the assumption would be that he is really interested."
But personal touches and shared experiences should be considered extravagant, she cautions, rather than costly grand gestures, because these are the best indications of commitment and interest.
Daniel Kruger, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, says the model is a simplistic take on highly complex behavior. "It's interesting to look at, but I wouldn't make an inference about what to do in a relationship based on these models."
Kruger is interested by the evolutionary interpretation of the results. The male peacock's beautiful, and cumbersome, tail might be an example of extravagance in the animal kingdom, he suggests.
"If women are complaining about how men are in relationships, they should think about the hanging fly," Kruger says. The male hanging fly gives the female a gift - a large dead insect - only to take it back after mating to be used in his next encounter.
