“Recession cues increased women’s desire for products that could make them more attractive to mates, despite the significantly greater expense of such products,” they wrote and suggested that was because luxury beauty brands do a better job advertising their attractiveness-enhancing benefits. Women chose the more expensive brands because these alone were perceived as being more effective to enhance their attractiveness. Specifically, “recession cues did not increase desire for discount brand beauty products.” When given a choice between pricey “attractiveness-enhancement” products and discount versions of the same, women, regardless of their economic status, chose the more expensive options. The researchers tested this assumption and found it didn’t hold. This was the rationale that Leonard Lauder proposed for the lipstick effect he observed. They then tested the hypothesis that under economic stress women indulge in small indulgences for an emotional boost, like lipstick, rather than more expensive luxuries, such as handbags. “Because there are fewer men with access to resources in recessionary times, women’s desire for resource access in a mate increased in response to recession cues,” they explained. It’s no surprise that women buy beauty products to increase their attractiveness to men, but that women lean into it more in tough economic times might be. The researchers theorized that women purchase beauty products to enhance their attractiveness to men since men place a premium on a woman’s physical appearance in their choice of a romantic partner.

“Recession cues persistently increased women’s desire to purchase beauty products,” they wrote, just as it tends to shift their spending away from other products that have no beauty-enhancing qualities, such as furniture, electronics and leisure/hobby products. And through a series of four experiments, the findings were consistent. In the study entitled “Boosting beauty in an economic decline: mating, spending and the lipstick effect,” the researchers adopted the broadest definition of the lipstick effect to include all beauty products, as opposed to focusing exclusively on lipstick.īeauty products were defined as cosmetic products that enhance a woman’s physical appearance, including lipstick. Uncovering lipstick effect psychologyĪn academic study led by Texas Christian University professors Sarah Hill and Christopher Rodenheffer lent further credence to the lipstick effect theory. He doubled down on the message after the recession of 2008 reporting once again a rise in company lipstick sales. In 2001, Leonard Lauder, chairman of Estee Lauder, supplied anecdotal evidence of the lipstick effect when he reported his company saw a spike in lipstick sales after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Lipstick Commercial Script