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Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior
That's the new book by Geoffrey Miller, of The Mating Mind fame. The exposition is a bit of a sprawling mess but the best pages of content are fascinating. I recommend it and I am glad that I started reading it the moment I got my hands on it.
The core thesis is the Veblenesque point that marketing plays upon our weaknesses as evolved, biological creatures, obsessed with signaling:
From my perspective as an evolutionary psychologist, this is how consumerist capitalism really works: it makes us forget our natural adaptations for showing off desirable fitness-related traits. It deludes us into thinking that artificial products work much better than they really do for showing off these traits. It confuses us about the traits we are trying to display by harping on vague terms at the wrong levels of description (wealth, status, taste), and by obfuscating the most stable, heritable, and predictive traits discovered by individual differences research. It hints coyly at the possible status and sexual payoffs for buying and displaying premium products, but refuses to make such claims explicit, lest consumer watchdogs find those claims empirically false, and lest significant others get upset by the personal motives they reveal. The net result could be called the fundamental consumerist delusion -- that other people care more about the artificial products you display through consumerist spending than about the natural traits you display through normal conversation, cooperation, and cuddling.
I very much agree. Miller also tells us that we can do better and offers us some (non-regulatory) proposals for lowering the cost of our signaling. (Don't buy a luxury car!) Would it be cheaper and more effective to wear credible, verifiable tattoos of our personality types from the six-factor model?
I'll be considering more from this book soon.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 29, 2009 at 07:02 AM in Books, Science | Permalink
Comments
The problem I have with this line of reasoning ('marketing made me do it') is that years and years of experience working in market research with advertisers and their agencies shows me that people aren't sheep (mores the pity :) Worse consumers nowadays get the fact that advertisers are using sex to 'trick' them into buying their products. Reflective consumers - the bane of marketers lives.
In fact, comedy tends to work better in advertising: but I guess that's just displaying good parenting skills to potential mates or something?
Posted by: Gerard O'Neill at Apr 29, 2009 8:44:48 AM
I don't buy it either. First of all I don't believe that it's a delusion that people care about wealth and status and make judgments about others on that basis -- they do. And it's not useful to oppose this to 'natural traits' -- both the desire for status and the tendency to judge based on status markers are part of human nature.
And it's also very wrong, I think, to blame consumerist capitalism, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the displays of wealth and status long predate modern consumer capitalism. But more than that, most consumer products (precisely because they are mass produced and generally affordable) have no value as status symbols -- their value lies only in their utility (think of any ordinary computer, cell-phone, or digital camera--the vast, vast majority of these provide now provide no status boost at all, but they remain damn useful).
If you want to see markets that operate on almost pure status, you have to go outside mass-market consumerism--look at the market for original art works, for example.
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 29, 2009 9:34:20 AM
I'm with the first commenter, it makes "the public" far more stupid than we are. I think advertising is more like a coordination game, or a signaling game within a signaling game. Of course people like to signal status and other characteristics like mad. But we have many high-end options with which to do so. The advertisers are saying "coordinate on us to do your signaling, we have the power and panache to be a dominant signal for a long time, your expensive signal won't be worthless tomorrow if you buy from us." The critical difference between this model and the one proposed by the author is that consumers are self-aware.
Now, another layer is that the author suggests that we signal the wrong things. That is an interesting hypothesis. I know some wealthy people who don't think status is very important, but signal it to increase their likelihood of sexual encounters with people who think it is. But are the receivers dumb like the consumers in the author's story, or do they too realize that status is a proxy for something else, essentially a sunspot used to coordinate matches. Individuals can be very stupid, but your bullshit detector should be on high alert any time someone tells you that everyone is stupid, or that almost everyone is stupid except for a few elites (who the story-teller is sufficiently smart to have identified).
Posted by: Sean at Apr 29, 2009 9:34:44 AM
This is silly. A more plausible story is that advertising is signaling within signaling. Consumer's consciously signal status with each other. Advertiser's signal their own status to consumers: We get what you want to do with this item, you guys should coordinate on us to do it, we've got panache and staying power.
The more provocative statement in the exerpt is that people signal the wrong things. People have been signaling wealth and status for millenia, clearly advertisers selling status signals are an effect, not a cause. Did status and wealth used to be good signals of offspring fitness and now they are not, or were they never any good in the first place? Are status and wealth easier to verify than better indicators of fitness, so that even if they are a poor proxy of fitness, they are the best signal we have? For example, you and your potential mate could both care less about status, but you both want a smart mate, one capable of anticipating equilibrium in a signaling game, so you both signal status.
Individuals are frequently stupid. But any time someone tells you that everyone is stupid, or even worse, tells you that almost everyone is stupid except for a few elites who he has managed to characterize (signal?!), grab your wallet.
Posted by: Sean at Apr 29, 2009 9:55:22 AM
Who are these people buying consumer goods to show off? What are the consumer goods that we are allegedly buying to do all this signaling? I don't recognise this behaviour in the people I know.
Posted by: Luis Enrique at Apr 29, 2009 10:00:33 AM
what constraint makes "cheaper" and "more effective" desirable in this context?
if signaling became more efficient, would people just do more signaling, taking up the same amount of time and money?
what is signaling trying to optimize?
Posted by: babar at Apr 29, 2009 10:07:51 AM
Die schlimmste Rezession droht Irland
"Immerhin sind wir nicht Simbabwe" - ein schwacher Trost für rund vier Millionen Iren, denen eine Arbeitslosenquote von 16,8 Prozent sowie eine explodierende Staatsverschuldung droht. Experten zufolge sind die Aussichten für den ehemaligen "keltischen Tiger" deutlich schlechter als für andere Industrieländer.
Irland säuft ab: Die Pfützen auf dem Golfplatz von Kildare stehen stellvertretend für den Zukunft der ganzen Insel.
Irland säuft ab: Die Pfützen auf dem Golfplatz von Kildare stehen stellvertretend für den Zukunft der ganzen Insel. Foto: Julien Behal/dpa
Dublin -
Irland droht nach Ansicht von Ökonomen die heftigste Rezession der Industrieländer. Die Wirtschaft werde zwischen 2008 und 2010 voraussichtlich um 11,6 Prozent schrumpfen, sagten die Experten des Wirtschafts- und Sozialforschungsinstitut (ESRI) am Mittwoch in Dublin voraus.
Das wäre doppelt so schlimm wie zunächst gedacht und schneller als in jedem anderen Industrieland. Die Experten gehen von einer Arbeitslosenquote von 13,2 Prozent in diesem und 16,8 Prozent im kommenden Jahr aus.
Beide Werte sind höher als von der Regierung prognostiziert. Die Brutto-Staatsverschuldung werde sich 2010 auf 70 Prozent des Bruttoinlandsprodukts erhöhen, hieß es.
Posted by: raivo pommer-www.google.fi at Apr 29, 2009 10:12:37 AM
Who are these people buying consumer goods to show off? What are the consumer goods that we are allegedly buying to do all this signaling? I don't recognise this behaviour in the people I know.
You've never had a woman in your office get engaged and come in sporting a 4 carat rock have you?
Posted by: jmo at Apr 29, 2009 10:13:30 AM
I wear wool blankets instead of clothes. In the summer I use cotton sheets. I wear underwear too but mostly to avoid indecency charges. I also have some rope that I use to hold my blankets in place. It is difficult for me to ride a bicycle.
I drink out of used tin cans, I have found that you get used to it quickly and only cut your lips when you are a rookie. I enjoy the autumn because I can sleep on a pile of leaves which is pretty decadent. Around my neck I have a necklace made of dental floss, attached to it is a laminated cashier's cheque in the amount of $758,456. If I spy a beautiful women I will clear my throat and slyly play with my necklace. I will propose a roll in the hay, she will have no idea how literally she should take this advance.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Apr 29, 2009 10:14:16 AM
So what would be the alternative to a car? (I'm actually not very convinced cars are all that useful - especially in Europe and in buildings, where most people will never see it). Unless of course you are one of the idiots flashing their Ferrari keys at the bar.
Posted by: Someone from the Other Side at Apr 29, 2009 10:35:23 AM
You've never had a woman in your office get engaged and come in sporting a 4 carat rock have you?
But a very small fraction of advertisement is for 4 carat rocks, and a lot is for beer.
From what I understand, advertising is more designed to transfer a feeling that a product "belongs to you", is the kind of thing with the kind of emotions that you, personally, like. A bit as if the product is going to be your friend. Status can be one aspect, but there are so many other aspects.
And a lot of advertisement simply says: we are cheap, but in a way that doesn't hurt quality a lot.
Posted by: Zamfir at Apr 29, 2009 10:39:15 AM
Zamfir, that's the signaling game. Nearly everyone agrees the difference in taste and cost between the major American beers is marginal. Each advertiser is trying to make the case that "guys like you should coordinate on this beer." By drinking the beer, you are signaling you are like the guy in the commercial (sports guy, party guy, mountain guy, or my new favorite, Heineken's "young professional but still fun guy"). When advertisers collide over the same demographic, it's a coordination game (which one can convince the most members of the group that it will become the dominant signal of type). The beer (or more generally, the drink) someone is drinking at a bar often carries information content. The problem I have with the exerpt is that I think in general consumers are quite aware of that fact, they are not being duped for the most part.
Posted by: Sean at Apr 29, 2009 10:52:44 AM
The first three commenters sound as though they have already read the book. Are you guys also getting advanced copies?
It appears to me that you are reacting to the implied threat to your personal model of the world rather than taking time to evaluate the 384 page argument that Miller is making. Should we always favor simple abstractions over potentially complicated and messy evidence?
I can't comment on this new book because I haven't read it yet, but The Mating Mind was filled convincing argumentation. It was also refreshingly honesty about the unresolved nature of the science, and the sometimes contradictory evidence, upon which those arguments were based.
Posted by: Gen. Ripper at Apr 29, 2009 10:58:28 AM
"Miller tells us we can do better" - I love that - always with such things there's some one eager to come forward and explain what people need and why they need it. Being able to describe a state of affairs is not the same thing as understanding its causes or having providence over its deliverance.
Posted by: saintsimon at Apr 29, 2009 10:59:45 AM
"The problem I have with this line of reasoning ('marketing made me do it') is that years and years of experience working in market research with advertisers and their agencies shows me that people aren't sheep[.]"
Perhaps it's possible that people are developing forms of "immunity" to marketing, which is a disease that's advancing in lockstep with intellectual countermeasures. Consequently, marketers think of steadily more sophisticated ideas as consumers become inured to old ones.
Posted by: Jake at Apr 29, 2009 11:06:26 AM
Zamfir, that's the signaling game.
But it's not signaling wealth or status. Virginia Postrel summed this up with, "I like that. I'm like that."
And keep in mind that the major American brewers who engage in lifestyle advertising have been doing worse over time -- they've lost market share to micro-brewers whose beers do taste different and who don't advertise on TV at all. Of course micro-brew drinking is wrapped up in identity, too:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/24/23-microbreweries/
But the identity effects of micro-brews depend on their NOT being mass-market products that are advertised on TV sporting events.
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 29, 2009 11:09:29 AM
Shoulda let Tyrone handle this one.
Posted by: Fenn at Apr 29, 2009 11:33:23 AM
Gen._Ripper: Let's not put the cart before the horse here. The purpose of a book (or any other kind of scholarly writing) is to get results. Ergo, real results always trump someone's writing about what results "should" look like. If Miller believes he has found a way to spend cheaply and yet accomplish what expensive signaling is intended to, he should just show his successes. But then, *that* would be the news, not the release of his latest armchair speculation about how you don't *really* need to impress people with expensive brands. I can reasonably infer that the book doesn't have this kind of proof or it would have made the news already.
A more parsimonious, and IMHO better theory of advertising is that it is a kind of signaling. Which others have said, of course, but specifically, a kind of signaling that says:
"Look how much money we're throwing on our brand. Heh, we'd have to be pretty stupid at this point to try to cut corners (or otherwise cheat you), right?"
And of course, it can be signaling other things, like, "hey, we're a focal point for goat lovers. You want street cred with your fellow goat lovers, don't you?" But I think the "showing commitment to protecting brand" is the dominant mode.
Posted by: Silas Barta at Apr 29, 2009 11:45:50 AM
Gen. Ripper, if you are going to describe how "consumerist capitalism really works" in one paragraph, you open yourself up to criticism when there are obvious alternative hypotheses, regardless of how well you support your description in the remaining 384 pages.
Posted by: Sean at Apr 29, 2009 11:51:02 AM
The first three commenters sound as though they have already read the book. Are you guys also getting advanced copies?
I believe we are reacting to the paragraph which Tyler cites approvingly as the book's 'core thesis'. Now if this turns out not actually to be the core thesis of the book, then, yes, our comments will have been off base (with respect to the book as a whole anyway -- but not with respect to the excerpt).
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 29, 2009 11:52:52 AM
Somewhat off topic: it's a five-factor personality model, not six. The acronym is OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism).
Posted by: Epictetus at Apr 29, 2009 11:54:26 AM
I feel so unevolved, that I'm biologically uninterested in signalling.
Posted by: Norman Pfyster at Apr 29, 2009 12:46:55 PM
In a similar vein, I made the mistake of reading a game theory book and Choosing the Right Pond simultaneously, and came out with the idea of medallions or tattoos that signify savings and credit rating. This would encourage savings in a very consumer-driven culture. Young people might not be so obsessed with cars, video games and clothes then - in particular, young men, because with the quality of the car & clothes signal degraded by the presence of the (more meaningful) credit rating and savings rate signallers.
Posted by: Mike Caton at Apr 29, 2009 2:22:42 PM
Alot of good points here. Seems like advertising is pretty multifaceted. Sometimes it's status, sometimes it's practicality, sometimes it's taste, sometimes it's social group signalling. These are all different buttons and sometimes multiple buttons are pressed at once. Humor is used to break down our defenses, as it creates a recognizable human connection between the writers/actors and the audience.
Sometimes ads tie non-status-related arguments to status-related arguments.
There was a subway ad for Sony camera face detection that said "Your father-in-law is not a horse's ass." It shows the father in law standing next to a horse, and the father comes out blurry because the camera doesn't have face detection.
The logic here is very interesting and it is all implicit. "If I don't have face detection THEN I will take worse pictures AND leave myself open to embarrassing mistakes THUS create an awkward or even insulting situation with people who I am trying to impress or with whom I am on shaky relations."
I think of advertising as a sort of spam -- much of the communication is about irrelevant noise. The game is to take your natural human inclinations and find a way to tie them to this particular product.
I think it is very much worth considering whether all this noise is (a) healthy, (b) worthwhile, (c) in the service of something greater and useful; (d) harmful in itself; etc. Obviously cutting off all advertising would be very extreme, but would a world with 50% less advertising be a less good world? What about some sort of "cap and trade" on advertising?
Another interesting question is "what is the logical conclusion of this 'arms race'?" Will consumers ultimately become so sophisticated that there will be no more advertising tricks that work? Will some tricks always have some effectiveness?
Also, is consumer sophistication useful for anything else besides resistance to advertising? (the only thing that occurs to me is a potential resistance to totalitarianism)
Posted by: mk at Apr 29, 2009 2:27:55 PM
Mike Caton: Young people might not be so obsessed with cars, video games and clothes then - in particular, young men, because with the quality of the car & clothes signal degraded by the presence of the (more meaningful) credit rating and savings rate signallers.
Heh -- I fear that a healthy bank-balance combined with a demonstrated frugality and un-willingness to spend liberally in order to please and impress females may...sad to say...not be what all young women are seeking.
mk: Another interesting question is "what is the logical conclusion of this 'arms race'?" Will consumers ultimately become so sophisticated that there will be no more advertising tricks that work? Will some tricks always have some effectiveness?
I find it really odd that people continue to assume that advertising is becoming more and more effective over time when the evidence runs in the opposite direction.
The advertising business is in steep decline. Print publications that have long been advertising's bread and butter are dying (and web advertising is not nearly as lucrative). Advertising-supported network TV has lost millions of viewers to cable channels, to DVDs, to streaming video. Big budget advertising did not prevent the rise of micro-breweries or the collapses of GM and Chrysler. Advertising is not now preventing The Paradox of Thrift. The evidence seems to indicate that most people are quite able to resist the siren songs of advertisers.
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 29, 2009 3:37:00 PM
