Women’s Menstrual Cycle, Buying Behaviours and Personality

When making financial decisions, people are not always rational, particularly because they are not always aware of all the cognitive factors that influence their ability to make decisions. The Self-Regulation Theory suggests that emotions, attention and mood affect our ability to make logical and unbiased cognitive decisions. Previous research implies that women’s menstrual cycle may influence women’s buying behaviours. However, not all women demonstrate buying behaviours that are sensitive to their menstrual cycle, and there could be individual differences that might predispose some women and not others to spend more during the Luteal Phase of their menstrual cycle. The purpose of the present study was to examine the moderating effect of personality on the relationship between women’s menstrual cycle and buying behaviours. Participants were surveyed on Amazons Mechanical Turk, and results suggested that while there was no correlation between the Luteal phase and increases spending, Assertiveness, a facet of Extraversion, did moderate the relationship between cycle phase and spending. Specifically, the results of this study suggest that women with higher scores on the Assertiveness facet of Extraversion reported decreased buying behaviours during their Luteal phase.