A third of women have admitted going on a date just to get a free meal, according to new research.
Two online studies by psychologists claim 23-33 per cent of women have been on ‘foodie calls’ in which they’ve dated someone they’re not interested just to be wined and dined.
According to research by professors in the department of psychology at Azula Pacific University, women who scored high on the three ‘dark’ personality traits – psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism – were most likely to engage in a foodie call, as reported by the MailOnline.
In the first study of 820 women, the women answered a series of questions measuring their personality traits, beliefs about gender roles and their ‘foodie call’ history.
They were asked it’s acceptable to go on a foodie call, with 23 per cent revealing they’d been on one, occasionally or rarely.
The women who admitted to having been on foodie calls believed it was acceptable, while the majority of women said its ‘extremely to moderately unacceptable.’
The second study analysed a similar set of questions of 357 heterosexual women and found 33 per cent had engaged in a foodie call.
However, both studies pointed out they hadn’t recruited representative samples of women, so it’s unknown whether they represent women in general.
Study co-author Dr Brian Collisson, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Azusa Pacific University, said:
Several dark traits have been linked to deceptive and exploitative behaviour in romantic relationships, such as one-night stands, faking an orgasm, or sending unsolicited sexual pictures.
They could be more prevalent, for instance, if women lied or misremembered their foodie calls to maintain a positive view of their dating history.
The term ‘foodie call’ is, of course, a clever play on the phrase ‘booty call’, which refers to calling someone up and using them for sex.
It would be interesting to know whether the women who accepted foodie calls knew they were going to be paid for, or whether they just assumed the other person would be paying for the meal.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.