Despite the lack of romantic attraction towards a suitor, there are women who would choose to go on a romantic date to receive a free dinner from the suitor. It is what has come to be called Foodie Calls.
Although the idea of the gastronomic call has been discussed in popular media for some time, psychologists Brian Collisson, Jennifer Howell and Trista Harig have been the first to address its study in the next investigation published in
Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Foodie Call
The research is based on two studies in which women were surveyed regarding their behavior regarding foddie calls, dark triad personality traits, traditional gender role beliefs, and online dating history.
The research concludes that between 23 and 33% of the women surveyed had on some occasion deliberately misrepresented their romantic interest towards a man to have dinner at his expense.
In Study 1, dark triad beliefs and traditional gender roles significantly predicted foodie calls' prior behavior and perceived acceptability. Study 2 used more comprehensive measures and again suggested that dark triad traits (narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism) predicted foodie calls and their perceived acceptability.
Collisson and his colleagues point out that the foodie perpetrator can be a man or a woman, and can happen in both same-sex and opposite-sex contexts. However, it is usually described as a case of a woman receiving a dinner offer from a man and pretending to be romantically interested just to get a free meal at a nice restaurant. For this reason, The researchers only surveyed women who identified themselves as heterosexual.
Scoring high in the traits of the dark triad means displaying these traits with greater intensity:
- Machiavellianism. They manipulate and deceive others for their own benefit.
- Psychopathy. They lack empathy for the plight of others and feel no remorse for their own harmful actions.
- Narcissism. They have an inflated sense of their own importance and rights. Additionally, although they are socially skilled, they have little interest in building deep relationships with others.
More than a thousand women completed questionnaires that assessed the following:
- Frequency of foodie calls. First, they were asked if they had ever participated in a foodie call. If they responded positively, they were asked to estimate how many times they had done it. Finally, they rated the social acceptability of this practice.
- dark triad. Respondents answered questions from commonly used scales designed to assess the degree of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism.
- Gender role beliefs. Items in this questionnaire assessed respondents' endorsement of traditional gender roles. Among these, of course, was the belief that it is a man's duty to pay all expenses on a date.
However, it should be noted that the majority of the women surveyed did not approve of foodie calls or get involved in them.
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The news
Up to a third of women surveyed would admit to going on a romantic date just to be invited to free dinner
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.