An Expedition called Shopping!

Image Courtesy: Markus Spiske, Unsplash.com

One weekend, my husband and I decided to go shopping. Of course, it took some amount of convincing from my side. I should have read the warning signs then, but persisted, hoping that my husband and I could indulge in some retail therapy. Here I was looking into every other shop, going through stuff that I had no intention of buying while observing my husband. He was with me but not with me. If you know what I mean!

I checked my watch and it had been barely an hour but his patience was already growing thin. I felt a few different emotions all at the same time. There was disappointment for not being able to tick-off all the outlets I had in mind. There was irritation at my husband for losing patience so quickly and there was complete confusion at not being able to understand why my husband was not enjoying this activity.

So, it lead me to do get some answers to this age old truth that most men don’t like shopping, while women can spend hours window-shopping and its actually therapeutic for most.

Kruger and Byker conclude that, "We believe, and study findings support this belief, that shopping behaviors are an adaptation of our species' ancestral hunting and gathering skills. Women scored higher on skills and behaviors associated with gathering, even through the environment and the objects being gathered have changed with respect to our ancestral environment. Men scored higher on skills and behaviors associated with hunting. Thus even though the prey is now an expensive home theater system, men are still applying the skills that were developed to obtain meat in a hunter-gatherer environment."

Men were the hunters in our ancestral cultures, so when they find a satisfactory specimen or object, whether its an elk or a pair of shoes, they want to shoot it and get out before it gets away. Women by contrast, were the primary gatherers in early cultures, so they feel a need to check every berry on the bush to make sure they are getting the best deal. Gatherers need to be able to assess if a fruit or vegetable is ripe, which explains why women are more sensitive to variations in reds, pinks, and yellows than men, for example. Smells and textures also can indicate ripeness. There is a certain amount of browsing involved in gathering as patches of fruits and vegetables are visited to determine their ripeness.

By and larger, Kruger insists, the data strongly supports the idea that modern women use skills dating back to their days as gatherers while on shopping expeditions. And men really are still on the hunt. Not always of course. Some men love shopping and some women hate it. But the masses generally conform to this theory.

So the next time you go shopping with the opposite gender, this knowledge may ease the trauma of shopping. Men could drink a beer and play with power tools while the woman goes shopping!