New study reveals how culture shapes our attraction to people who flaunt their wealth

A recent study published in the International Marketing Review suggests that the type of luxury a person displays online can influence how attractive they appear to potential romantic partners, though this effect tends to depend on their cultural background and gender. The findings provide evidence that showing off expensive experiences, like luxury travel, often signals competence more effectively than flaunting material goods like designer watches. This pattern is particularly strong among South Korean women evaluating potential male partners.

“My work centers on conspicuous consumption, that is, spending meant to signal one’s social status and wealth to others,” said study author Hyun Young Cho, an assistant professor in the Department of Business Administration at Daejin University in Pocheon, South Korea. “Traditionally that has meant luxury goods, but as luxury products have become more accessible, material displays have lost some of their signaling power.”

People often display wealth to attract romantic partners by signaling their social status and available resources. This behavior traditionally takes the form of material conspicuous consumption, which involves buying expensive, tangible items like designer clothing, high-end electronics, or luxury cars to visibly communicate financial success to others.

As luxury goods have become easier to acquire, attention has shifted toward experiential conspicuous consumption. This involves spending money on exclusive events, high-end dining, or luxury travel.

“People increasingly signal status through experiences instead,” Cho explained. “These are interesting precisely because they require more than money. They also imply cultural knowledge and taste, which makes them a more refined kind of status claim.”

Free daily newsletter

“I wanted to know whether this shift extends to romantic signaling,” Cho said. “Decades of work in psychology suggest that women weigh a partner’s economic resources heavily, while men weigh physical attractiveness more. But nearly all of that research assumed material displays.”

Cho noted that experiential conspicuous consumption has been studied in consumer contexts, yet its role in mate evaluation had received almost no attention. “The only directly relevant evidence we could find was a single qualitative study in Korea. We ran two experiments to test it directly, and in two countries, because status symbols do not mean the same thing everywhere,” Cho added.

The researchers recruited 120 single adults from South Korea and 200 single adults from the United States for an online experiment. Participants read a hypothetical scenario about going on a blind date and viewing the potential partner’s social media profile. The profile displayed either material luxury, such as a Prada handbag or a Rolex watch, or experiential luxury, such as a stay at a high-end hotel and expensive theater tickets.

The scientists measured how competent the participants thought the partner was, their overall attitude toward the person, and their intention to pursue a romantic relationship. All of these measures used a seven-point rating scale, with higher numbers indicating a stronger response.

In South Korea, participants reported a higher average intention to pursue a romantic relationship with a partner who displayed luxury experiences, scoring 3.50 out of 7, compared to a partner who displayed material goods, who scored 3.00 out of 7.

“In our Korean samples, people responded more favorably to a potential partner who displayed experiences than to one who displayed luxury goods, and this operated through perceived competence,” Cho told PsyPost. “The experiential display made the person look capable and cultured, which improved attitudes toward them, which in turn raised romantic interest. In the U.S. samples, the two kinds of display were broadly interchangeable.”

This pattern in South Korea was largely driven by South Korean women, who rated men displaying expensive experiences as much more competent than those displaying material items. South Korean men did not show a preference between the two types of luxury when evaluating women.

In the United States, participants reported similar levels of romantic interest across both the experiential condition, scoring 5.72 out of 7, and the material condition, scoring 5.56 out of 7. A specific gender difference emerged among the American participants.

“I expected U.S. men to be largely indifferent to the type of consumption a woman displayed, since men’s evaluations of women are generally thought to be driven by attractiveness,” Cho said. “Instead, American men rated women who displayed experiences as more competent and more romantically appealing than women who displayed luxury goods, while American women drew no distinction between the two.”

In Korea, the researchers found the mirror image, where women differentiated and men did not. “So the gender asymmetry in decoding these signals seems to be culturally contingent rather than universal,” Cho explained. “One possible reading, consistent with recent findings on luxury experiences and status attribution on social media, is that a woman’s experiential display is decoded as refinement and cultural capital, whereas luxury goods may hint at material expectations. But that is an interpretation our data cannot fully test, and I would flag it as such.”

To see if these patterns held up with more realistic visual cues, the authors conducted a second experiment using mock Instagram profiles. This sample included 180 single adults from South Korea and 195 single adults from the United States. Participants read a scenario about briefly meeting an attractive person offline and then checking their Instagram account. The mock profile featured either a prominent material luxury item, like a Montblanc pen or Chanel cosmetics, or an exclusive luxury experience, such as a trip to a famous resort island.

The second experiment produced similar but statistically stronger results compared to the first study. South Korean participants again expressed higher romantic intentions toward individuals posting luxury experiences, averaging 3.50 out of 7, compared to those posting material items, who averaged 3.00.

“The effect was weak in Study 1, which used a written scenario, and considerably stronger in Study 2, which used simulated Instagram profiles,” Cho pointed out. “Richer and more realistic cues appear to make these signals easier to read, and that is also closer to how people encounter them in daily life.”

Just as in the first experiment, South Korean women drove this effect by rating men with luxury experiences as more competent, while South Korean men showed no difference in their evaluations of women. For the American participants in the second study, overall romantic intentions were again comparable between the experiential profiles, scoring 6.04 out of 7, and the material profiles, scoring 6.18. Yet, the American men again perceived women who posted luxury experiences as more competent. American women did not differentiate between the two types of posts when evaluating male targets.

Cho reflected on the consistency across the experiments. “Only that the two studies used quite different presentations, a written scenario and a simulated Instagram feed, and the cultural pattern held across both. To me that is the most reassuring part of the result.”

These differences trace back to how societal norms shape the interpretation of wealth. “So the broader point is that a status signal only works if the audience decodes it the way the sender intends,” Cho observed. “In a society that is both highly materialistic and shaped by Confucian norms of modesty, an overt luxury display can register as ostentatious rather than impressive, while an equally expensive experience carries no such penalty. In the U.S., where visible wealth tends to be read as earned, that penalty is much weaker.”

But readers should consider the magnitude of these findings when applying them to real life. The type of luxury someone displays is just a single factor in the complex process of mate selection.

“These are modest effects, and I would want readers to hold them that way,” Cho told PsyPost. “In our first study, consumption type accounted for roughly 2% of the variance in romantic intention. In the second, which used more visually realistic stimuli, it accounted for about 8%. On a seven-point scale, the Korean difference amounted to roughly half a point.”

Cho emphasized that this is a real and replicable difference, but it is only one of many cues that shape romantic interest, alongside appearance, personality, conversation, and shared background. “The practical reading is not that posting about travel will make someone more attractive. It is that the type of status display can shift first impressions at the margin, and that the direction of the shift depends on where you are and who is looking,” Cho explained.

As with all research, the study has some caveats. The experiments isolated visual cues on social media, so the influence of these luxury signals might shift during live, face-to-face interactions. “First of all, this is a study of how observers decode signals, not of what makes people happy or what makes relationships last. We measured initial impressions of a stranger’s profile, not relationship outcomes,” Cho cautioned.

Cho also highlighted important nuances regarding the absolute scores between the two countries. “Also, please don’t read the cross-country comparison as evidence that Americans are more romantically interested than Koreans. Absolute intention scores were much higher in the U.S. samples, but that gap almost certainly reflects differences in how people in the two countries use rating scales, along with differences in recruitment source. The meaningful comparison is within each country, between the two conditions.”

Additionally, in the first study, the interaction between culture and the type of consumption did not reach statistical significance. “The cross-country difference there rests on planned contrasts and should be read as directional,” Cho noted. “Study 2, with more realistic stimuli, provided the stronger test. And because both studies used hypothetical scenarios with opposite-sex targets, extension to real dating behavior, and to same-sex attraction, remains an open question.”

The researchers plan to explore how experiential and material displays function in other areas of life. They are currently looking into whether these signals affect consumer behavior.

“I am currently extending this work from romantic contexts to commercial ones,” Cho said. “The question is whether a salesperson who displays experiential consumption is perceived as more competent than one who displays material consumption, and whether that perception translates into stronger purchase intention among consumers. If status signals shape how we evaluate a potential partner, they may work in a similar way when we evaluate someone we are deciding whether to buy from.”

The study, “Experiential vs. material conspicuous consumption as romantic signals: evidence from South Korea and the United States,” was authored by Jin Suk Lee and Hyun Young Cho.