Evolution and Human Behavior 36 (2015) 218223

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Evolution and Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.ehbonline.org

Original Article

Beauty against tobacco control: viewing photos of attractive women may

induce a mating mindset, leading to reduced self-control over smoking
among male smokers,
Wen-Bin Chiou a,, Wen-Hsiung Wu b, Ying-Yao Cheng a
a
b

Institute of Education, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan

Department of Healthcare Management and Medical Informatics, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung 80708, Taiwan

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Initial receipt 21 July 2014
Final revision received 12 November 2014
Keywords:
Facial attractiveness
Mating motivation
Smoking
Temporal discounting
Tobacco control

a b s t r a c t
Successful smoking cessation or reduction requires smokers to focus on the distal concerns of health and control
instead of immediate impulses to smoke. Based on pioneering research demonstrating that cues inducing a mating mindset (i.e., viewing pictures of attractive women) can engender greater temporal discounting in men, we
conducted a laboratory experiment to examine whether viewing faces of attractive women rendered male
smokers with intentions to quit or reduce smoking more likely to discount the future and give in to the immediate impulse to smoke by sacricing distal health concerns during a subsequent task. Seventy-six male smokers
with intentions to quit or reduce smoking were randomly assigned to view either attractive or unattractive
opposite-sex faces. Participants completed a modied Stroop task measuring their mating mindset after the attractiveness manipulation. The dependent variables were temporal discounting and actual cigarette consumption during an ostensible survey. A mating mindset mediated the connection between viewing pictures of
attractive women and greater temporal discounting. Male smokers exposed to photographs of attractive compared with unattractive women were less likely to refrain from smoking and smoked more cigarettes in a subsequent survey. Attractive women may act as stimuli that increase a mating mindset among male smokers with
intentions to quit or reduce smoking, leading to greater temporal discounting and reduced control over cigarette
consumption. The implications for associations among mating motives, temporal discounting, and control over
addictive impulses and behaviors are discussed.
2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In principle, self-control refers to the control of one's thoughts, emotions, impulses, and behavior by oneself (Ainslie, 1975; Baumeister,
Vohs, & Tice, 2007). Smoking cessation and reduction require continuous self-control efforts in diverse contexts over time (Chiou, Wu, &
Chang, 2013). Research regarding self-control has shown that poor
self-control is associated with greater temporal discounting (i.e., a preference for larger, distant rewards over smaller, immediate ones) (Fujita,
2011; Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006; Malkoc, Zauberman,
& Bettman, 2010). Wilson and Daly (2004) measured the parameters

Declarations of interest: The authors have no conicts of interest to declare.

Funding was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan,
ROC (Project No. NSC 100-2628-S-110-005-MY3; Project No. NSC 101-2410-H-110-052MY2). Dr. Chiou would also like to acknowledge the support received from Aim for the
Top University Plan of the National Sun Yat-sen University and Ministry of Education,
Taiwan, Republic of China.
Corresponding author. Institute of Education, National Sun Yat-sen University, 70 LienHai Rd., Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan. Tel.: +886 7 5250133.
E-mail address: wbchiou@mail.nsysu.edu.tw (W.-B. Chiou).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.11.006
1090-5138/ 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

involved in temporal discounting after participants rated either attractive or unattractive opposite-sex faces by offering a choice between
two monetary options: a specied sum tomorrow ($1535) or a larger
sum ($5075) after a specied delay (7236 days). They showed that
temporal discounting increased signicantly among men who viewed
pictures of attractive women. Based on the study conducted by Wilson
and Daly (2004), we argue that male smokers may show increased temporal discounting, which is associated with yielding to the immediately
satisable impulse to smoke while sacricing distal concerns of health,
after viewing attractive opposite-sex faces. In the present study, we
tested whether male smokers exposed to photographs of attractive
compared with unattractive women would demonstrate greater temporal discounting and smoke more cigarettes while subsequently completing questionnaires.
According to sexual strategies theory (Buss & Schmitt, 1993;
Gangestad & Simpson, 2000), some aspects of mate value and romantic
desire depend on the temporal contexts of human mating. Based on
evolutionary theories (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Rhodes, 2006), Wilson
and Daly (2004) argued that a mating-opportunity mindset induced
by the availability of courtship-worthy targets (e.g., pictures of attractive women) induces an increase both in efforts to mate and in the preference for smaller, immediate rewards. They demonstrated that

W-B. Chiou et al. / Evolution and Human Behavior 36 (2015) 218223

exposure to pictures of attractive women increased men's discount

rates in a monetary-choice task, whereas the same exposure did not
have this effect on men who viewed pictures of relatively unattractive
women. These ndings suggest that cues that activate mating motives
may induce men to behave impulsively, as evidenced by increased temporal discounting.
Additionally, previous studies have also demonstrated an association between discount rates and addictive behaviors (see Bickel et al.,
2007 for a related review). For example, individuals with addictions appear to discount more (i.e., are more impulsive) compared with those
who do not use drugs (Crean, de Wit, & Richards, 2000). Compared
with non-dependent controls, drug-dependent individuals, such as
those dependent on cocaine (Coffey, Gudleski, Saladin, & Brady, 2003),
problem drinkers (Petry, 2001; Richards, Zhang, Mitchell, & de Wit,
1999), and cigarette smokers (Baker, Johnson, & Bickel, 2003; Bickel,
Odum, & Madden, 1999; Mitchell, 1999) exhibited greater temporal
discounting. Indeed, heroin addicts have been found to have higher discount rates than controls (Kirby, Petry, & Bickel, 1999). Addicts' discount rates increase as a function of time elapsed since their last
injection (Giordano et al., 2002). Moreover, it has been demonstrated
that temporal discounting incrementally improves the prediction of
tobacco, alcohol, and drug use and of sociosexual orientation above
and beyond the predictive power of sex and the big ve traits
(Daugherty & Brase, 2010). These ndings collectively indicate that
poor self-control over impulses and behaviors is manifested by greater temporal discounting.
Smokers with intentions to quit or reduce smoking face a typical
self-control dilemma involving distant concerns of health (the distal
motivation) and immediate impulses to smoke (the proximal motivation). Self-control among these smokers entails consistently acting in
accord with their distal motivation, which, in this case, involves the successful inhibition of immediate impulses to smoke in favor of distal
health concerns. In contrast, a failure in self-control entails acting in a
manner consistent with proximal motivation, sacricing distal concerns
of health in favor of the immediate impulse to smoke. Such a tendency
toward temporal discounting (i.e., to prefer the proximal motivation
over the distal motivation) has been shown to be an example of poor
self-control (Ainslie, 1975; Fujita & Han, 2009; Mischel, Shoda, &
Rodriguez, 1989). Given that men with a mating mindset appear to discount the future (Wilson & Daly, 2004), we argue that male smokers
may act in accord with their proximal motivation (i.e., the impulse to
smoke) after viewing pictures of attractive women.
Recent research has demonstrated that induced mating motives
may elicit a variety of behaviors in men, including devoting more attention to money (Roney, 2003), failing to conform (Griskevicius,
Goldstein, Mortensen, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006), spending conspicuously (Griskevicius et al., 2007), playing risky blackjack hands (Baker
& Maner, 2008), donating more generously (Iredale, Van Vugt, &
Dunbar, 2008), and being more likely to endorse statements
supporting war on a questionnaire (Chang, Lu, Li, & Li, 2011). The
current research focused on smokers with intentions to quit or reduce smoking, because these individuals encounter a self-control
conict in which the distal and proximal motivations press for opposing behaviors. Findings obtained from these smokers can provide
insights into how stimuli that induce a mating mindset may interfere
with control over the use of tobacco.
In summary, building on pioneering work showing that viewing pictures of attractive women may induce greater temporal discounting in
men (Wilson & Daly, 2004) and on recent advances in understanding
the link between greater temporal discounting and poor self-control
over impulsive choices and behaviors (Daugherty & Brase, 2010; Fujita
& Han, 2009; Kirby et al., 1999), we hypothesized that viewing pictures
of attractive women would induce a mating mindset and thereby lead
to increased impulsivity in smokers with intentions to quit or reduce
smoking, as evidenced by greater temporal discounting and the failure
to inhibit the impulse to smoke.

219

2. Methods
2.1. Participants
The formal sample consisted of 76 male smokers (mean age =
30.9 years, SD = 5.9) who intended to quit or reduce smoking. The candidate participants (N = 96) were recruited from the larger community
using a subject pool drawn from a civic health study administered
through the College of Health Sciences at Kaohsiung Medical University
in Kaohsiung (the largest city in southern Taiwan). The candidate participants were screened through face-to-face interviews to ensure that
they met the following study criteria: no current psychopathology, no
current nicotine-replacement therapy, smoking of at least ve cigarettes
per day for the past year, and an intention to quit or reduce smoking.
Measures of intention to quit or reduce smoking were assessed with a
dichotomous item (I intend to quit or reduce smoking) with which respondents either agreed or disagreed (Smit, Fidler, & West, 2011).
Twenty candidate participants who did not meet the study criteria
were screened out.
During recruitment, participants provided demographic information, answered a question about number of cigarettes smoked per day,
and rated nicotine dependence on the seven-item modied Fagerstrm
Tolerance Questionnaire (Prokhorov et al., 2000; mean score range:
09). Participants were also told to bring their usual brand and type of
cigarettes to the study.
2.2. Setting
The laboratory consisted of a study room and a smoking room connected by a small shaft that allowed the experimenter to communicate
with the participant. The attractiveness manipulation and the modied
Stroop task were performed on a desktop computer located in the study
room. The smoking room contained a chair, table, ashtray, lighter, and
respiratory tube connected with a ventilator in the ceiling. Experimental
sessions were conducted with a half-hour break between participants to
minimize the salience of smoking during previous sessions.
2.3. Procedure
Upon arrival, participants were informed that they were going to engage in several unrelated tasks to be used in future studies. After participants provided written consent, they were then randomly assigned to
rate the appeal of either highly attractive or less attractive opposite-sex
faces using a seven-point scale (1 = unappealing, 7 = very appealing).
The photographs were taken from our prior research about search
bias in nding a romantic partner online (Wu & Chiou, 2009). Based
on male participants' ratings of the attractiveness of opposite-sex prole pictures on a seven-point scale (1 = unattractive, 7 = very attractive), we selected photographs that were rated as either highly
attractive (mean rating higher than 6.0) or much less attractive (mean
rating of 2.03.5). Sixteen photos of women with the same ethnicity
were chosen via this selection and were randomly presented in headand-shoulder images, centered on a black screen. Participants were
instructed as follows: Please rate the following pictures according to
how appealing you nd the woman's face.
Wilson and Daly (2004) hypothesized that viewing pictures of attractive women would activate a mating-opportunity mindset, inducing
men to discount the future. However, they did not elucidate the psychological mechanisms associated with responses to cues of mating opportunities. Thus, the facial attractiveness task was followed by a modied
Stroop task (a color-naming task) to test reaction times (RTs) to matingrelated and neutral terms. Participants were presented with words
printed in either blue or red and were asked to press the key corresponding to the correct color. The color-naming task included six
mating-relating words (couple, courtship, love, mate, reproduction,
and sex) and six neutral words (background, book, building, neutral,

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ofce, and space). The mating-related words were chosen based on semantic closeness and were approved by two linguistics professors who
were blinded to research purposes. Each term appeared randomly four
times, yielding a total of 48 trials. Longer mean RT represents greater
Stroop interference, indicating that thoughts about mating interfered
with naming the font color in the Stroop task.
Subsequently, participants were asked to complete unrelated questionnaires, ostensibly to validate several scales. The experimenter told
each participant: This survey will take you about 30 minutes to nish.
Therefore, you are allowed to smoke if you want. Each participant was
led to a smoking room to complete the survey. The time (in minutes) for
completing this survey was recorded. This survey included a temporaldiscounting measure. Participants expressed their preferences related
to winning a lottery in terms of a series of nine binary choices, selecting
between receiving $120 immediately or receiving varying amounts of
money ($113, $120, $137, $154, $171, $189, $206, $223, and $240) in
1 year (Hardisty & Weber, 2009; Joshi & Fast, 2013). At the end of this
experiment, participants were probed, but none of them guessed the
real purposes or expressed any suspicion that these tasks were related.
2.4. Measurements
2.4.1. Mating mindset
People who are induced to think about a topic typically show slowed
RTs in naming the color of words related to that topic (i.e., Stroop interference), as these words have become more interesting and accessible (Lee & Chiou, 2013; Sparrow, Liu, & Wegner, 2011). The mean
difference in RTs between mating-related and neutral terms in the
modied Stroop task was used as the measure of the presence of a
mating mindset.
2.4.2. Discounting rate, cigarette consumption, and supplementary measures
With regard to temporal discounting, we calculated the discount
k by employing the hyperbolic-discounting formula: k = (A/V 1)/
time in years, where A (future amount) is the value needed in the future to discount V (current amount) immediately (Hardisty &
Weber, 2009; Joshi & Fast, 2013). Larger values of k imply greater
temporal discounting.
Following Chiou, Wan, Wu, and Lee (2011), cigarette consumption
was dened by the number of cigarettes smoked during the survey,
measured using the number of cigarette butts left in the ashtray.
Additionally, participants also completed the positive and negative affect schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988; positive affect (range
1 5): = 0.87, negative affect (range 1 5): = 0.86] as part of
the ostensible survey.
3. Results
3.1. Manipulation check
Participants rated faces as signicantly more appealing under the
high-attractiveness (mean = 5.36) than under the low-attractiveness
condition (mean = 2.91), t(74) = 13.43, p b 0.001, p 2 = 0.71 (see
Table 1), conrming that the selected faces differed as intended.
3.2. Mating mindset and temporal discounting
A repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the RTs for
naming the color of mating-related versus neutral terms revealed an interaction with attractiveness condition, F(1, 74) = 22.483, p b 0.001,
p2 = 0.233. Simple effects tests showed that the interaction was driven
by greater Stroop interference (i.e., the mean RT for mating-related vs.
neutral terms) under the high-attractiveness condition (mating:
mean = 846.50 ms; neutral: mean = 744.42 ms; F(1, 37) =
159.394, p b 0.001, p 2 = 0.812) and less Stroop interference under
the low-attractiveness condition (mating: mean = 788.47 ms;

Table 1
Descriptive statistics by condition.
Variable

Age
Number of cigarettes smoked per day
Nicotine dependence (09)
Survey completion time (minutes)a
Positive affect (15)
Negative affect (15)
Rating of attractiveness (17)
RT to mating-related terms (ms)
RT to neutral terms (ms)
Mating mindset measure (ms)
Discounting rate (k parameter)
Number of cigarettes smoked

Low attractiveness

High attractiveness

Mean SD

Mean SD

31.68
17.08
5.28
38.42
2.65
1.72
2.91
788.47
743.68
44.79
0.45
1.03

30.18
16.03
5.18
37.08
2.49
1.76
5.36
846.50
744.42
102.08
0.58
2.08

6.33
8.05
1.35
4.88
0.59
0.29
0.86
206.06
196.14
55.35
0.24
1.05

5.62
7.02
1.24
4.01
0.48
0.32
0.72
218.28
222.19
49.84
0.21
1.24

Note: Units of measurement are presented in parentheses. Age, number of cigarettes

smoked per day, nicotine dependence, survey completion time, positive affect, and negative affect did not differed in the two conditions. The measure of mating mindset was the
mean difference in the reaction time (ms) between mating-related terms and neutral
terms in the Stroop color-naming task. Larger differences indicate a more pronounced
mating mindset. A larger rate of k parameter indicates greater temporal discounting. CI:
conference interval.

neutral: mean = 743.68 ms; F(1, 37) = 24.887, p b 0.001, p 2 =

0.402). Furthermore, Table 1 shows that the mating mindset measure, as indexed by the mean difference in RTs between matingrelated terms and neutral terms in the Stroop color-naming task,
was greater under the high-attractiveness (mean = 102.08 ms)
than under the low-attractiveness condition (mean = 44.79 ms),
t(74) = 4.742, p b 0.001, p 2 = 0.233. These ndings indicate that
participants viewing pictures of attractive women appeared to
think more about mating, which led to interference in naming the
color of mating-related terms in the Stroop task.
In terms of temporal discounting, participants under the highattractiveness condition showed higher discounting rates (mean =
0.58) than did those under the low-attractiveness condition (mean =
0.45), t(74) = 2.548, p = 0.013, p 2 = 0.081. This nding indicates
that the high-attractiveness manipulation led to greater temporal
discounting than did the low-attractiveness manipulation. In other
words, male smokers who had viewed the faces of more attractive
women were less willing than were their counterparts to wait for larger
future gains.
To examine whether a mating mindset mediated the connection between viewing pictures of attractive women and greater temporal
discounting, we created a dummy variable for our experimental manipulation (1 = high attractiveness, 0 = low attractiveness), used the
mating-mindset measure (i.e., the mean difference in Stroop interference between mating-related and neutral terms) as the mediator, and
treated the discounting k parameter obtained in the monetary choice
task as the dependent variable. Viewing attractive opposite-sex faces
predicted the results of the mating-mindset measure (b = 57.29,
SE = 12.08, t = 4.472, p b 0.001), the results of the mating-mindset
measure predicted the discounting-rate parameter (b = 0.0028, SE =
0.0004, t = 7.062, p b 0.001), and the effect of viewing attractive
opposite-sex faces on the discounting rate was not signicant (from
b = 0.13, SE = 0.05, t = 2.548, p b 0.013, to b = 0.02, SE = 0.05,
t = 0.534, p N 0.59) when the mating-mindset measure (mean =
73.43 ms, SD = 59.73) was included in the equation. A bootstrap analysis (Preacher & Hayes, 2004) showed that the 95% bias-corrected condence interval (CI: 0.090.24) for the indirect effect (b = 0.16, SE =
0.04; bootstrap resamples = 5000) excluded zero, suggesting a signicant indirect effect (MacKinnon, Fairchild, & Fritz, 2007). Thus, the results of the mediation analysis suggest that a mating mindset
mediated the relationship between the attractiveness manipulation
and temporal discounting (see Fig. 1).

W-B. Chiou et al. / Evolution and Human Behavior 36 (2015) 218223

4. Discussion

Mating mindset
0.48 (p < 0.001)

0.67 (p < 0.001)

0.28 (p < 0.013)

High attractiveness

Temporal discounting
0.05 (p > 0.59)

Fig. 1. Mediation of the effect of viewing opposite-sex faces on temporal discounting.

Values are standardized regression coefcients. On the lower path, the values below and
above the arrow are the results of analyses in which the mediator (a mating mindset)
was and was not included in the model, respectively. The mating mindset was indexed
by the mean difference in reaction time (ms) between mating-related terms versus neutral terms in the Stroop color-naming task.

3.3. Smoking outcomes

As shown in Table 1, age, number of cigarettes smoked per day, nicotine dependence, survey completion time, positive affect, and negative
affect did not differ between subjects in the two study groups
(ps N 0.19). Therefore, these factors were not used as control variables
in subsequent analyses.
With respect to level of smoking during the survey, we employed binary logistic regression analysis to examine the experimental effect on
smoking during the survey (1 = smoking, 0 = no smoking). As
Table 1 shows, smoking during the survey was associated with the attractiveness manipulation (1 = high attractiveness, 0 = low attractiveness), 2(1) = 5.464, p = 0.019, Nagelkerke R 2 = 0.10. Participants
under the high-attractiveness condition were more likely to smoke
(84.2%, 32 of 38) than were participants under the low-attractiveness
condition (60.5%, 23 of 38), b = 1.25, SE = 0.56, Wald = 5.044, p =
0.025, odds ratio = 3.48, 95% CI: 1.1710.32. Moreover, we employed
the bootstrap analysis to examine whether temporal discounting
would mediate the association between viewing pictures of attractive
women and smoking during the survey (see Fig. 2). As expected, the indirect effect was signicant (b = 3.03, SE = 3.13, 95% bias-corrected CI:
0.158.94; bootstrap resamples = 5000). Viewing attractive oppositesex pictures predicted the discounting rate (standardized b = 0.284,
t = 2.548, p = 0.013), the discounting rate predicted smoking during
the survey (Wald = 19.035, Z = 4.363, p b 0.001), and the relationship
between viewing attractive opposite-sex pictures and smoking during
the survey (Wald = 5.044, Z = 2.246, p b 0.025) was no longer signicant when we controlled for the discounting rate (Wald = 0.559, Z =
0.748, p N 0.45). Mediation analysis results may suggest that increased
temporal discounting induced by viewing pictures of attractive
women leads to the failure in smoking-impulse control among male
smokers with intentions to quit or reduce smoking.
In terms of amount of smoking during the survey (Table 1),
the discounting rate was associated with the number of cigarettes
smoked (r = 0.611, p b 0.001). More importantly, participants who
had viewed more attractive opposite-sex faces smoked more cigarettes
(mean = 2.08) than did those who viewed less attractive faces
(mean = 1.03), t(74) = 3.992, p b 0.001, p2 = 0.177.

Temporal discounting
12.62 (2.89)**

0.13 (0.05)*
1.25 (0.56)*
High attractiveness

221

Smoking during the survey

0.69 (0.92)

Fig. 2. Mediation of the effect of viewing opposite-sex faces (1 = high attractiveness, 0 = low
attractiveness) on subsequent smoking during the survey (1 = smoking, 0 = non-smoking).
Regression coefcients are unstandardized, and standard errors are given in parentheses. Asterisks indicate signicant path coefcients (*p b .05; **p b .01). On the path from facial attractiveness manipulation to smoking during the survey, the values above the arrow are
from the model without the mediator (discounting rate), and the values below the arrow
are from the model that included the mediator.

Building on the notion that stimuli that induce a mating mindset

may lead men to discount the future, we hypothesized that viewing pictures of attractive women would induce male smokers with greater
temporal discounting and thereby more likely to act on a proximal motivation (the impulse to smoke) than a distal one (health concerns). This
prediction was supported by ndings showing that male smokers
intending to quit or reduce smoking were less likely to refrain from
smoking and smoked more cigarettes while completing a survey after
viewing more attractive than after viewing less attractive opposite-sex
faces. A mating mindset, as indexed by performance on the modied
Stroop task, was associated with temporal discounting and subsequent
cigarette consumption. This study indicates that stimuli inducing a mating motivation or thoughts of sex may be connected more closely with
impulse-control behaviors such as smoking than previously thought.
Our ndings contribute to the literature in several important ways.
First, compared with the results reported by Wilson and Daly (2004),
who showed that men who were exposed to cues of mating opportunities exhibited higher discount rates in choices of monetary rewards, we
provide experimental evidence demonstrating that a mating mindset
mediated the link between viewing pictures of attractive women and
greater temporal discounting. Second, the mating-mindset measure
was positively related to subsequent cigarette consumption, serving as
the rst demonstration that the mating motives induced by viewing
the faces of attractive women may lead to the failure to control tobacco
use among male smokers. In principle, smokers with intentions to quit
or reduce smoking encounter a prototypical self-control conict as distal concerns regarding health and proximal impulses to smoke press for
opposing actions. The present study indicates that a mating mindset induced by viewing pictures of attractive women may reduce control over
the impulse to smoke. Our ndings not only supplement the literature
on the relationship between self-control and impulse control
(e.g., Kahan, Polivy, & Herman, 2003; Muraven, Collins, & Nienhaus,
2002; Vohs & Heatherton, 2000; West, 2001) but also suggest that mating motivation may interfere with the self-regulation of smoking. Third,
prior research has shown that a mating motivation activated by exposure to attractive opposite-sex photographs or sexual or romantic scenarios may induce males, but not females, to exhibit a variety of
masculinity-related behaviors, such as acting in nonconforming ways
(Griskevicius et al., 2006), donating more generously (Iredale et al.,
2008), acting aggressively (Chang et al., 2011; Griskevicius et al.,
2009; Mussweiler & Frster, 2000), attending more to money (Roney,
2003), and performing risk-taking behaviors (Baker & Maner, 2008;
Pawlowski, Atwal, & Dunbar, 2008). Tobacco advertisements have traditionally promoted smoking as a masculine display (Starr, 1984), and
previous studies have demonstrated the connection between masculinity and smoking (Pachankis, Westmaas, & Dougherty, 2011; Seltzer,
1959). The observed connection between a heighted mating mindset
and reduced control over smoking adds to the body of evidence
supporting an association between mating motivation and
masculinity-related behaviors. Finally, our measure of impulse-control
behavior (i.e., smoking) was actual cigarette consumption rather than
self-reported consumption, as in prior studies (e.g., Erskine, Georgiou,
& Kvavilashvili, 2010; Pachankis et al., 2011). The use of a behavioral
measure is more appropriate for the detection of the immediate behavioral effects of an experimental manipulation.
4.1. Limitations and future directions
Our ndings focused on the immediate effects of two conditions in a
laboratory setting. Thus, caution should be exercised when generalizing
our ndings to everyday contexts. Since the pictures of women were selected from a dating site, there were somewhat different features
(e.g., type of clothing, lighting, background, etc.) in these images. The
manipulation check for facial attractiveness was satisfactory. However,

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it would be more appropriate to use photos of people with homogeneous features except facial attractiveness. Although the current research suggests a link between viewing pictures of attractive women
and reduced control over cigarette consumption among male smokers,
we acknowledge that our facial attractiveness manipulation was limited
to one dichotomized independent variable. Furthermore, we acknowledge that the lack of an age-matched control sample of males is a limitation. Future research should examine whether smokers have a higher
baseline preference for temporal discounting compared with control
participants and whether the tendency to discount the future would
shift as a function of the experimental manipulation. Moreover, poor
self-control presumably leads to more smoking in both men and
women. The lack of female smokers is a limitation of the current research. Future research should investigate whether the conditions that
lead to reduced self-control in women have a similar inuence on
smoking behavior. Additionally, the intention to quit or reduce smoking
was measured on the day of recruitment. Participants' responses may
not reect their intentions on the day of participation and/or may
have been subject to social desirability. Finally, Maner, Gailliot, and Miller (2009) showed that participants in a committed romantic relationship were inattentive to attractiveness alternatives. The current
research did not examine whether men's relationship status interacted
with the attractiveness effect.
Our ndings also suggest several interesting avenues for future research. For example, can stimuli chosen to heighten mating motivation
affect other impulsive behaviors, such as drug and alcohol use, gambling, Internet use, compulsive buying, and dietary control? In another
vein, recent advancements in temporal discounting indicate that a
lack of connection with the future self is a crucial mechanism underlying preferences for smaller immediate gains over larger future gains
(e.g., Ersner-Hersheld, Garton, Ballard, Samanez-Larkin, & Knutson,
2009; Pronin, Olivola, & Kennedy, 2008). For instance, Joshi and Fast
(2013) showed that the experience of power enhanced one's connection with one's future self, which, in turn, resulted in reduced temporal
discounting. Future research should examine whether cues or experiences of promoting one's connection with one's future self can reduce
temporal discounting, leading to increased control over impulsive behaviors such as smoking. Additionally, the mating inclination was not
measured before participation. Researchers may examine the moderating role of mating motivation in the effect of viewing attractive
opposite-sex faces on impulsivity-related measures. Specically, it
may be interested to test if men with inherently higher levels of mating
motivation would be more sensitive to the effect of attractiveness manipulation on temporal discounting and the exercise of control over cigarette consumption.
4.2. Conclusion
In summary, the current study extends the connection between
mating motivation and temporal discounting by showing that cues
that induce a mating-opportunity mindset may induce male smokers
with intentions to quit or reduce smoking to show inadequate selfcontrol with regard to their impulse to smoke. Men who want to quit
or reduce smoking or to confront other impulse-control problems may
benet from monitoring whether mating-related or sexual stimuli in
everyday life were associated with their impulse-control-related behaviors. An old Chinese saying notes, Pretty ladies, gentlemen's desire;
however, this research demonstrates that, at least with regard to
men's control over tobacco use, attractive women appear to be an exception to the heuristic that what is beautiful is good!
Supplementary materials
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx.
doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.11.006.

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