Ovulatory cycle effect on tip earnings by lap dancers

Working Paper of the Day- Ovulatory cycle effect on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus;

Geoffrey Miller and his team at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, compared the earnings of lap dancers who were menstruating naturally with those of dancers taking the hormonal contraceptive pill. During the non-fertile periods of their menstrual cycle, both sets of dancers earned similar tips. But when naturally cycling lap dancers entered their fertile period they earned significantly more in tips than their co-workers on the pill

Via Gene Expression;

This is a nice way at getting around subjective measures of "attractiveness" in studies like this-- the amount of money made by a stripper probably corresponds pretty well to how physically attractive the males in the audience find her. And as seen in the graph on the right, there's a noticeable peak in earnings among normally-cycling women at around 10 days (ovulation).

Excerpt from the conclusion;

We found strong ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings, moderated by whether the participants were normally cycling. All women made less money during their menstrual periods, whether they were on the pill or not. However, the normally cycling women made much more money during estrus (about US$354 per shift)—about US$90 more than during the luteal phase and about US$170 more than during the menstrual phase. Estrous women made about US$70 per hour, luteal women made about US$50 per hour, and menstruating women made about US$35 per hour. By contrast, the pill users had no midcycle peak in tip earnings. As in other previous research, the pill eliminates peakfertility effects on the female body and behavior by putting the body in a state of hormonal pseudopregnancy (e.g., Gangestad, Simpson, Cousins, Garver-Apgar, & Christensen, 2004; Gangestad et al., 2005; Macrae, Alnwick, Milne, & Schloerscheidt, 2002). This also results in pill users making only US$193 per shift compared to normally cycling women making US$276 per shift—a loss of more than US $80 per shift.

This is the first direct economic evidence for the existence of estrus in contemporary human females. Under the “revealed preference” doctrine in behavioral decision theory (Camerer, 2003; Hensher, Louviere, & Swait, 1999), real consumer spending patterns reveal human preferences more reliably than verbally stated judgments do, especially for socially stigmatized products such as pornography or sex work (Salmon & Symons, 2001). When women and men interact intimately over the course of several minutes through conversation and body contact, women apparently either “signal” or “leak” cues of their fertility status, and these cues influence spending patterns by male consumers. These results argue against the view that human estrus evolved to be lost or hidden from males (e.g., Strassmann, 1981; Turke,
1984). …

This study has several limitations. The sample size of participants is small (N=18), although we gathered many data points per participant, which allowed us to use a statistically powerful repeated-measures design (including 296 work shifts reflecting about 5300 lap dances). Although the modest number of participants does not increase type I errors (i.e., false positives) in our statistical tests, it may reduce the generalizability of the results across populations —although it is unclear why different populations of sexually mature, normally cycling, human females would show different ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings, if they work in the same industry.