Gender Age And Clothing Shopping Essay

For decades psychologists have been studying the relationship between gender, age and clothing shopping behaviors. Evolutionary psychologists, like Kenrick and Trost (1993), believe that men are more aggressive, inclined to promiscuity, and more concerned with the youth and physical attractiveness of their female partners, while females are more focused on a nice appearance because men are wired to be more attracted to that. Based off that theory, women are more likely to shop for new clothes to highlight their attractiveness to potential mates. However, an opposite situation happens with animals in nature. In nature it is the males that have to attract the females, and the males often have brighter colors, more plumage and use big displays

The mean age was 27.8 years (SD = 16.39). The modal age was 18 years (n = 256). For the full sample, the mean number of shoes owned was 15.53 pairs (SD= 14.8). Mean male shoe ownership was 9.2 pairs (SD = 5.46); the mode for males was 6 pairs. For females, mean shoe ownership was 21.9 pairs (SD = 15.19); the modal number of pairs of shoes owned was 15.

Results 2: Inferential statistical

These found significant positive relationships between age and shoe ownership in the full sample, r (750) = .247, p <.001, to further understand the data, males owned fewer shoes than females. The average number of shoes females had were 21.9 pairs of shoes while the average for males was 9.8 pairs. Although no previous research has been done specifically on this topic, there have been studies done on the relationship between gender, age and clothing shopping behaviors. Psychologists like Kenrick and Trost (1993) believe that based on evolutionary theories women are more concerned with having a nice appearance in order to attract a male mate, while men are more concerned with the physical attractiveness of their female partners. This theory can be used as an explanation for why women are more likely to be excessive shoppers than men. In a study done in the United Kingdom in 2004 by Dittmar, she found that more than 85 percent of sufferers of excessive buying are female, while it was atypical in UK men to be excessive buyers. Women also seem to be buying more things for emotional and pleasurable reasons instead of the practical reasons men have. (Lott and Maluso 1993) Women also have incredibly positive attitudes while shopping, and have a “leisure frame” for buying clothing, while men tend to have more negative attitudes and see buying as a task to accomplish with minimum time