Study: Men Who Wear Clothes With Big Designer Logos Are More Likely To Cheat

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Published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the study set out to answer whether or not men's "audacious displays of wealth" as indicators of their economic power and ability to invest in their offspring's futures are enticing to women,  reported Daily Mail.

However, the study's conclusion found that men who wear luxurious clothes with big logos merely increase their chances of mating instead of reproducing.

According to the abstract of the study, it concluded that those who wear flashy, luxurious clothes are rated:

- higher on mating effort
- lower on parental investment
- higher on interest in brief sexual affairs
- lower on interest in long-term committed romantic relationships
- higher on attractiveness to women for brief sexual affairs
- lower on attractiveness to women for long-term committed relationships
- higher in developmental environment unpredictability compared with men owning shirts displaying a smaller logo

In order words, they are more likely to "wham, bam, thank you ma'am", as they tend to avoid long-term relationships and are likely to be bad fathers. They are more likely to engage in sexual affairs too.

Parental investment can be defined as the allocation of parents' resources — such as time or energy — to offspring, while environmental unpredictability is a concept within life history theory that is commonly used in early childhood studies.

A study found that people who grow up in unpredictable environments tend to have higher aggression and lower prosociality (behaviours that are intended to benefit others).

"Rather than being a reliable and honest signal of future paternal investment, displays of luxury goods may sometimes represent investment in mate attraction, which is at the expense of future investment in offspring," he told Daily Mail.

"Luxury displays featuring exaggerated size, coloration, and sound may indicate relatively greater investment in mating effort."

"Large luxury product logos enhance social competitiveness and mate attraction, whereas small logos enhance perceptions of trustworthiness and reliability."

The sample group was asked to imagine a man owning the shirts and rank him on a scale of 1 to 100 for various factors relating to the effort he puts into both mating and parental investment.

The factors include whether the man 'flirts often', 'knowingly hits on someone else's partner', is 'good at taking care of children', and 'devotes most resources to supporting family', among others.

They were also asked whether the man is likely to pursue a short- or long-term relationship.

Kruger said the study found students imagined that the man who owned the shirt with a bigger logo was more invested in mating, less invested in becoming a parent, and more interested in engaging in a short-term relationship.

In another part of the study, 615 male participants were asked whether they would wear a Ralph Lauren polo with a big or small logo to attend various events, such as a party, interview, or family reunion.

They said they would pick the one with a bigger logo to places where they had to compete for social dominance, while a smaller logo to attend a casual dress job interview or meet their partner's parents for the first time.

Daily Mail reported that female respondents' expectations of how a man wearing the polo shirts with different sizes of logos matched the male respondents' responses.