New research published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences challenges a popular belief: men do not necessarily spend more on gifts for affair partners than for their committed partners. Instead, both men and women spend more on maintaining long-term relationships, with significantly less spending directed at partners in extramarital or casual relationships.
“We initially became interested in this topic after hearing a wildlife biologist give a talk about the curious mating behavior of fairy wrens, a bird endemic to Australia,” said study authors Olivia James (a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) and Keelah Williams (an associate professor of psychology at Hamilton College).
“Fairy wrens engage in both monogamous and extrapair relationships, similar to human relationships. When courting extrapair females outside their nest, the male fairy wren will present the female with a flower petal as a token of their interest. This same courtship ritual doesn’t occur when the male courts a monogamous partner.”
“We thought there was an interesting analogy here with a common trope in Western romantic comedies: that if a man is engaging in an affair he will spend more money on a gift for his affair partner than on his wife (such as seen in the film Love Actually). We became curious about whether this trope was simply reflective of current pop culture or, instead, reflected real gift-giving behaviors in romantic relationships.”
To investigate, researchers conducted three studies, each designed to explore different aspects of gift-giving in relationships. In the first study, they focused on hypothetical spending scenarios to capture how much participants would be willing to spend on gifts in different relationship contexts. A total of 139 participants were recruited and asked to imagine themselves in various relationship scenarios, including situations involving either committed partners or affair partners. For each scenario, they were instructed to imagine spending on a gift for a specific partner, either to maintain an ongoing relationship or to initiate a new one.
In the second study, the researchers gathered data on real-life spending by asking 233 participants to recall their own experiences in both committed and extramarital relationships. They divided participants based on their history of relationships, distinguishing those who had only been in committed relationships from those who had been involved in extramarital relationships. Participants were asked to recall the typical cost of gifts they had received from their partners, enabling the researchers to compare actual gift spending across relationship types.
The third study expanded on the first two by exploring societal stereotypes around gift spending. This time, 151 participants were asked to make judgments about how they thought others would spend on gifts in similar relationship scenarios, rather than imagining their own spending behavior. Participants responded to the same types of hypothetical scenarios used in Study 1, but instead of reporting how they would personally spend, they estimated how people of their own gender might approach gift spending on committed versus extramarital partners.
The findings across the three studies were consistent. In Study 1, participants reported they would spend more to maintain committed relationships than to initiate or maintain extramarital ones. This finding suggested that people prioritize their long-term relationships in terms of resource allocation, even in hypothetical situations.
In Study 2, the analysis of recalled gifts indicated no significant difference in spending between committed and extramarital relationships, meaning that people did not report receiving more expensive gifts in one relationship type over the other. This finding contradicted the stereotype that people spend more lavishly on affair partners and suggested that, in practice, gift-giving behaviors align more with reinforcing long-term commitment.
Finally, in Study 3, participants expected both men and women to spend more on gifts to maintain committed relationships than on extramarital ones. While there was a stereotype that men might spend more on affair partners than women would, this did not translate to an expectation that men would spend more on extramarital relationships overall compared to their spending on committed relationships.
“The main takeaway from this research is that stereotypes about men spending more lavishly on gifts for their partners in romantic relationships, and affair partners in particular, are not reflective of current gift-giving behaviors in the United States,” James and Williams told PsyPost. “Our findings suggest that both men and women would spend more on a gift for their romantic partner, as opposed to an affair partner, and that men and women indicated they would spend roughly the same amount on gifts. From a functional perspective, this suggests that gift giving may be used more as a strategy for promoting a long-lasting relationship, instead of as a method for initiating or maintaining an affair.”
“The results from all three experiments were surprising in that they were contrary to common stereotypes about gift-giving behaviors in romantic relationships. For example, contrary to previous research we find that men and women report a willingness to spend the same on gifts in their romantic relationships (rather than men spending more), and we do not find evidence that affair partners receive more expensive gifts than long-term partners.”
The researchers pointed out that gift-giving behavior might serve different purposes depending on the relationship. In a committed partnership, gift giving can act as a bond-strengthening activity, symbolizing long-term commitment and reinforcing the connection between partners. In contrast, gift giving in extramarital relationships may not carry the same weight, especially if the affair is not intended as a long-term bond. For this reason, people may feel less inclined to spend significant resources on an affair partner, where commitment is less of a factor.
But as with all research, there are some caveats.
“One caveat of our research is that spending more money on a gift is not indicative of the quality and meaning of the gift to the person in the relationship,” James and Williams noted. “It is possible that a $20 gift could be more meaningful to maintaining, or initiating, a relationship than a $500 gift. The present research was also not able to assess the cultural meaning behind gifts and how that can influence gift-giving behaviors for romantic partners and affair partners.”
“Additionally, the sample for the research consisted of straight, monogamous participants from the United States. There should be further consideration of applying the findings of this research to other countries, cultural values, belief systems, and relationship types.”
Looking forward, the researchers hope “to promote more research and discussion about the evolutionary underpinnings of gift-giving behaviors in romantic relationships. Future work may investigate the differences in gift-giving behaviors based on factors such as culture, sexual orientation, and relationship structure (e.g., monogamous or polyamorous).”
The study, “Gift Giving in Inpair and Extrapair Relationships,” was authored by Olivia M. James, Amanda C. Kim, Jessica D. Ayers, and Keelah E. G. Williams.
