Romance, risk, and replication: Can consumer choices and risk-taking be primed by mating motives?

Interventions aimed at influencing spending behavior and risk-taking have considerable practical importance. A number of studies motivated by the costly signaling theory within evolutionary psychology have reported that priming inductions (such as looking at pictures of attractive opposite sex members) designed to trigger mating motives increase males' stated willingness to purchase conspicuous consumption items and to engage in risk-taking behaviors, and reduce loss aversion. However, a meta-analysis of this literature reveals strong evidence of either publication bias or p-hacking (or both).