Romance, Risk, and Replication: Can Consumer Choices and Risk-Taking Be Primed by Mating Motives?

David Shanks and colleagues investigates whether social priming involving looking at pictures of attractive opposite sex members to trigger mating motives increases males’ stated willingness to purchase conspicuous consumption items, to engage in risk-taking behaviors, and reduce loss aversion. In a monster study with 8 experiments consisting of 1600 participants, their findings reveal no evidence for such a priming effect and moreover, add to the growing sense of a “reproducibility crisis” in the field of psychology.

There is also a good blog post from @Neuroskeptic on the paper.