How the attractive make a meal out of food bill on dinner date

PEOPLE who think they are attractive are less likely to offer to pay for a dinner date, according to a new study.

Researchers found people who judge themselves good-looking tend to expect their potential love interest to pay for the meal.

Psychologists from the University of St Andrews also found that women preferred men to pay, especially when they were handsome.

Men were more likely to offer to pay for female dates if they were pretty.

Psychologist Dr Michael Stirrat said: “The context is a hypothetical dating context.

“You would expect people to have a knowledge about how good looking they were and so the more attractive people in that context are just going to get more interest so they need to make less effort in that situation either to meet people, or get a chance to impress people, so it does make sense that more attractive people would be less willing to pay.

“They are going to have more opportunity so they can be more choosy.”

The psychologists carried out the study by setting up hypothetical blind dates.

They asked the 245 men and 171 women to rate how handsome or pretty they thought they were.

The researchers then showed them 12 facial images of the opposite sex, ranging from unattractive to good-looking, and asked them who they would prefer to pay the bill if they went for a meal.

Both sexes more often reported a preference for their date to pay than to pay for the meal themselves.

The researchers also found that participants of both sexes who considered themselves attractive were more likely to prefer their date to pay for the meal.

Dr Stirrat said: “What was interesting was that the women tended to say the more attractive the man the more likely they were to say they would like him to pay.

“The women responded to this as a signal, they would rather that a more attractive man paid for the meal than a less attractive man because it seems to be that they saw this as a signal to further pursue the relationship.

“If you keep it reciprocal it’s like saying I’m not really interested.”

The experts carried out the study as part of investigations into the role of “food provisioning” in humans.

The study is published in Evolutionary Psychology.