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More on the new Geoffrey Miller book, *Spent*
Here is a typical bit:
Sexual traits are also well predicted by the Central Six [personality traits]...The highly sociosexual, open, impulsive, and selfish tend to invest more of their time and energy in "mating effort" rather than "parenting effort": they are constantly seeking new sexual partners rather than raising the offspring from existing relationships. On the other hand, people with "restricted" sociosexuality (the virginal, the chaste, and the happily married) have fewer sexual partners, less infidelity, lower openness, higher conscientiousness, higher agreeableness, and lower extraversion. They invest more time and energy in parenting effort and less in mating effort.
Miller suggests also that parasite loads of various societies predict (cause?) their openness. A "mating-primed" man is more likely to express bold taste when asked about his preference in cars. Mostly I am skeptical of such claims (many of the studies fall apart upon inspection) but still it is worth hearing Miller out as long as you approach the cited results with some skepticism.
I liked this passage:
Some common themes emerge from these slightly whimsical suggestions. One is that buying new, real, branded premium products at full price from chain-store retailers is the last refuge of the unimaginable consumer, and it should be your last option. It offers low narrative value -- no stories to tell about interesting people, places, and events associated with the product's design, provenance, acquisition, or use. It reveals nothing about you except your spending capacity and your gullibility, conformism, and unconsciousness as a consumer.
The impish troublemaker in me -- and yes I have now been Robin's colleague for over ten years -- wonders if indeed that is exactly what people are signaling with those purchases.
Here is my first post on the book.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 3, 2009 at 06:55 AM in Books, Science | Permalink
Comments
I would argue that buying new, real, branded premium products at full price from chain-store retailers signals that your time is much too valuable to be frittered away monitoring sales, clipping coupons, or browsing curio shops in trendy shopping meccas.
Posted by: rejewvenatorr at May 3, 2009 9:45:52 AM
What personality traits are characteristic of successful politicians?
Posted by: TomHynes at May 3, 2009 9:56:13 AM
Stuff White People Like #187: Artisanal products with interesting provenance
So for just what fraction of the products that an 'imaginable' consumer like Miller uses every day, does he want 'high narrative value' as a feature?
- Electronics?
- Prescription drugs?
- Automobiles?
- Toothpaste? Laundry detergent?
- Wall paint? 2x4s?
Would he be happier with a locally hand-crafted computer (built, of course, from custom, one-of-a-kind artisanal chips and circuit boards) bought at a farmer's market from a man who knows the circuit-designer personally?
But even if high narrative value is a criterion, I think he's got the issue backwards because industrially produced products bought at chain stores have MUCH more interesting back-stories than local, hand-crafted products. Think of 'I, Pencil' -- the story for almost anything in Walmart would be just as fascinating (the sources of the raw materials, the people who designed the product, the people who designed and made the machines used to produce the product, the business relationships and financial arrangements, the shipping and distribution, etc, etc).
When I buy a computer, I really don't wish I could buy one that was hand-crafted by local artisans. I love the idea that it represents the combined efforts of many, many thousands of people over years and decades across many fields, all over the globe. To me, that's way more compelling than, say, locally pressed raw Apple cider.
Dammit -- branded products at chain stores are friggin' miracles of human ingenuity and cooperation, and the unimaginative anti-consumerist, anti-globalization lefties who can't see that that have no poetry. They walk through a Walmart sneering and blind to what's in front of them, and what's their ideal? Homespun. Sheesh.
Posted by: Slocum at May 3, 2009 9:58:08 AM
I find similar evidence of the six basic personalities/traits in some of my work, but couldn't disagree more about his commercial consumer comment.
High profile retail merchandise offers the easiest narrative possibilities to people because the declarative nature of the item(s) does not have to be explained. You can go right to the 'consumption' aspects. For example, talk about golf clubs at any country club, luxury cars at any high-end event, or pick-up trucks at the Co-op. Each type of product allows for massive signaling and narrative fodder exactly because the audience already knows the basics. I agree with Slocum here, except that the stories are often fatuous and not fascinating-- I know the ENTIRE argument about F-150s vs Chevy trucks and never wanted to...
Posted by: The Other Eric at May 3, 2009 11:10:46 AM
Slocum: "Would he be happier with a locally hand-crafted computer (built, of course, from custom, one-of-a-kind artisanal chips and circuit boards) bought at a farmer's market from a man who knows the circuit-designer personally?...I love the idea that it represents the combined efforts of many, many thousands of people over years and decades across many fields, all over the globe. To me, that's way more compelling than, say, locally pressed raw Apple cider."
Funny you should mention Apple cider...Macs are the computer hardware/software equivalent of artisanal products with interesting provenance.
Posted by: David at May 3, 2009 11:36:13 AM
Slocum, great comment!
Posted by: Gary at May 3, 2009 11:41:46 AM
So, in other words, higher Sociosexuality correlates positively with Extraversion*, Openness, and promiscuity, and negatively with Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, fidelity, and caregiving. (One infers little correlation with Neuroticism.) Geoffrey actually seems to be making the case against the inclusion of sociosexuality as a 'personality trait' in its own right. The extent of the correlations are unclear, of course, which leaves me confused as to whether he's describing a notable clustering in the data, or illustrating the range of 'sociosexuality' as a metric indexed by four personality traits. A rather important question, as the result is essentially a binary polarization of the Clean and the Dirty (and gods-in-his-heaven-alls-right-with-the-world). If the latter, the most scandalous assertion is the negative correlation with caregiving. Liberal parents everywhere should drop their children off at daycare and rush to the barricades in contestation of the issue.
'Unimaginable' consumer is presumably a typo, although I rather like the notions of transcendental marketing epistemology it evokes. The signaling criteria here (meant to be descriptive of real trends rather than prescriptive, I hope) capture the essence of the style signaling meme as a whole: that every choice must be intentional, because every choice is judged. The contradictory irony is there, the exhortation to avoid nonconformity by avoiding conformity; what is meant, of course, is that one must strive to be a leading indicator of style, rather than a lagging indicator, and thus appear to have the power to influence others. It reminds one that where signaling meets the commodity, the most prominent concern is the exploitation of interpolative anxiety, the fear that one is not recognized by the people one wants to resemble as being authentically familiar or similar.
It's a bit self serving, really, to use such unguardedly exhortative language. Of course unconsciousness as a consumer is a sign of mediocrity! Geoffrey just finished writing a whole book about purchase signaling, and the subject is very, very important!
Personally, I'd argue the opposite case, that unconsciousness as a consumer (in these terms) is a sign of extreme self confidence and self sufficiency. My thought is that the real reason people tend to buy "new, real, branded premium products at full price from chain-store retailers" is that they cannot afford the time. I had occasion to reflect on this recently, standing in an Office Depot (a warehouse-type chain store in North America), looking at a CD of boring sounding mini-games that was retailing for $30 and could easily be replicated for free by a bit of searching on the internet. It seemed intended as a last-minute impulse purchase for someone facing the prospect of air travel, someone who simply did not have time to search for a more satisfying or economical alternative.
What struck me most was the hidden distortion of real wage value given the absolute time commitment implicit in most high-income jobs. The time one has to find a nice-enough apartment at good value, the time one has to prepare meals, the time one has to develop authentic narrative (social) value in one's life independent of one's purchases; that sort of thing. Following right from that would be the distortion of real wage value if one accepts as authentic the implicit interpolative commitments of the high-income job. Not only the quality of suit, but the country club, and the golf clubs, and the quality of private school.
There was a fairly notorious quote circulating recently, someone from the financial industry asserting quite seriously that one could not live in New York on a salary of less than $75,000 per year. After we all finish mocking that, I think perhaps we should take it seriously. The statement reminds me of an article (i forget where) a few years back about a trend of high-income people in Toronto encountering problems with serious debt because of the high investment in ostentation/identity signaling required to have viable relationships with their business contacts. In such a situation, the decision to send one's children to a private school is not a choice per se; or to the extent that it is, it is part and parcel to one's entire ambition and identity. Thus such seemingly stupid things get said, when really what is meant is that one cannot expect to succeed in today's financial industry without a personal income of at least $75,000.
Having mentioned 'real wage value', I should make an attempt to quantify it somehow, but I'm afraid I lack the frame of reference to even make an internet-quality guess about it. One might talk about it in terms of opportunity cost, but the concept seems to me a bit of a red herring, useful only insofar as one can be sure of the value of lost opportunity. (And minus the computational overhead, known in human terms as time wasted dithering.) It seems readily apparent to me that working 20 hours a week for $20/hr is far more valuable than working 40 hours a week for $10/hr. One could measure the difference in terms of productive capacity, thinking that one could hypothetically work 40 hours a week for $20/hr, or whatever the maximum work period is. Unfortunately, that doesn't really address the competing value of 'disposable time', especially once one starts talking about heavy work commitments and begins to get into the disutility of sleep loss, the erosion of personal relationships... and of course the prospect of embarrassing purchasing decisions.
*I've capitalized the 'Big Five' personality traits.
P.S. My html markup shows up in the preview, but often disappears in the posted comment. Is there something I'm doing wrong?
Posted by: sleepy_commentator at May 3, 2009 1:10:59 PM
So, in other words, higher Sociosexuality correlates positively with Extraversion*, Openness, and promiscuity, and negatively with Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, fidelity, and caregiving. (One infers little correlation with Neuroticism.) Geoffrey actually seems to be making the case against the inclusion of sociosexuality as a 'personality trait' in its own right. The extent of the correlations are unclear, of course, which leaves me confused as to whether he's describing a notable clustering in the data, or illustrating the range of 'sociosexuality' as a metric indexed by four personality traits. A rather important question, as the result is essentially a binary polarization of the Clean and the Dirty (and gods-in-his-heaven-alls-right-with-the-world). If the latter, the most scandalous assertion is the negative correlation with caregiving. Liberal parents everywhere should drop their children off at daycare and rush to the barricades in contestation of the issue.
'Unimaginable' consumer is presumably a typo, although I rather like the notions of transcendental marketing epistemology it evokes. The signaling criteria here (meant to be descriptive of real trends rather than prescriptive, I hope) capture the essence of the style signaling meme as a whole: that every choice must be intentional, because every choice is judged. The contradictory irony is there, the exhortation to avoid nonconformity by avoiding conformity; what is meant, of course, is that one must strive to be a leading indicator of style, rather than a lagging indicator, and thus appear to have the power to influence others. It reminds one that where signaling meets the commodity, the most prominent concern is the exploitation of interpolative anxiety, the fear that one is not recognized by the people one wants to resemble as being authentically familiar or similar.
It's a bit self serving, really, to use such unguardedly exhortative language. Of course unconsciousness as a consumer is a sign of mediocrity! Geoffrey just finished writing a whole book about purchase signaling, and the subject is very, very important!
Personally, I'd argue the opposite case, that unconsciousness as a consumer (in these terms) is a sign of extreme self confidence and self sufficiency. My thought is that the real reason people tend to buy "new, real, branded premium products at full price from chain-store retailers" is that they cannot afford the time. I had occasion to reflect on this recently, standing in an Office Depot (a warehouse-type chain store in North America), looking at a CD of boring sounding mini-games that was retailing for $30 and could easily be replicated for free by a bit of searching on the internet. It seemed intended as a last-minute impulse purchase for someone facing the prospect of air travel, someone who simply did not have time to search for a more satisfying or economical alternative.
What struck me most was the hidden distortion of real wage value given the absolute time commitment implicit in most high-income jobs. The time one has to find a nice-enough apartment at good value, the time one has to prepare meals, the time one has to develop authentic narrative (social) value in one's life independent of one's purchases; that sort of thing. Following right from that would be the distortion of real wage value if one accepts as authentic the implicit interpolative commitments of the high-income job. Not only the quality of suit, but the country club, and the golf clubs, and the quality of private school.
There was a fairly notorious quote circulating recently, someone from the financial industry asserting quite seriously that one could not live in New York on a salary of less than $75,000 per year. After we all finish mocking that, I think perhaps we should take it seriously. The statement reminds me of an article (i forget where) a few years back about a trend of high-income people in Toronto encountering problems with serious debt because of the high investment in ostentation/identity signaling required to have viable relationships with their business contacts. In such a situation, the decision to send one's children to a private school is not a choice per se; or to the extent that it is, it is part and parcel to one's entire ambition and identity. Thus such seemingly stupid things get said, when really what is meant is that one cannot expect to succeed in today's financial industry without a personal income of at least $75,000.
Having mentioned 'real wage value', I should make an attempt to quantify it somehow, but I'm afraid I lack the frame of reference to even make an internet-quality guess about it. One might talk about it in terms of opportunity cost, but the concept seems to me a bit of a red herring, useful only insofar as one can be sure of the value of lost opportunity. (And minus the computational overhead, known in human terms as time wasted dithering.) It seems readily apparent to me that working 20 hours a week for $20/hr is far more valuable than working 40 hours a week for $10/hr. One could measure the difference in terms of productive capacity, thinking that one could hypothetically work 40 hours a week for $20/hr, or whatever the maximum work period is. Unfortunately, that doesn't really address the competing value of 'disposable time', especially once one starts talking about heavy work commitments and begins to get into the disutility of sleep loss, the erosion of personal relationships... and of course the prospect of embarrassing purchasing decisions.
*I've capitalized the 'Big Five' personality traits.
P.S. My html markup shows up in the preview, but often disappears in the posted comment. Is there something I'm doing wrong? (And I had to repost; I hope most sincerely that I have not posted twice, and my apologies if I did.)
Posted by: sleepy_commentator at May 3, 2009 1:13:13 PM
From David:
Funny you should mention Apple cider...Macs are the computer hardware/software equivalent of artisanal products with interesting provenance
Damn it!! You beat me to it!
Posted by: Yancey Ward at May 3, 2009 1:14:56 PM
Well, blueberries. Sorry folks. If one of those two could be deleted, I appreciate it.
Posted by: sleepy_commentator at May 3, 2009 1:15:08 PM
Slocum - Right on, man!
Posted by: kebko at May 3, 2009 1:43:39 PM
My experience goes against the argument that "the real reason people tend to buy 'new, real, branded premium products at full price from chain-store retailers' is that they cannot afford the time." Discussion boards of high-end custom-made products (e.g., bespoke suits from Rubinacci) are largely populated by earners well within the top 1% spending their working hours in discussion of narrative nuances rather than on billable pursuits.
I suspect this kind of reasoning of "ones time being too valuable" plays out in the upper middle class, but falls apart at higher income levels, at least with respect to purchases. It's a far more nuanced signal of wealth and social status/class to purchase things that are both expensive and require a substantial investment of time.
Posted by: Jason at May 3, 2009 2:18:16 PM
I would argue against the fact that people who buy products that are branded and are at full price are unoriginal. That's actually exactly what my brother tells me about all of his clothes. But since all he does is shop at thrift stores, go dumpster diving, and occasionally get a tailored shirt or jacket, he has an awful wardrobe. This may not be a very good data point, but the reality is if he just looked for some buisiness casual clothes that actually fit at a JCrew or something he would have much more respect at his job at JP Morgan. Yes, he works on Wall Street and he shares this view because he has a degree in Economics from Harvard.
I think that there are so many places to buy clothing nowadays anyways, the competition for good looking clothes is so high, that a niche for cheaper, higher-fashion chains has opened up with stores such as H&M. You might as well take advantage of the market and go to an H&M or something. This high competition has also resulted in quality that generally is not offered somewhere such as Chinatown where my brother would shop. "Sure, those fake pumas and fake Adidas track jacket were cheap and thats a funny story, but you look terrible."
Of course, this is just in the case of clothing, and I agree with the idea in terms of other things such as food and cars. You should always try new places to eat to escape from McDonalds if you have the time, or perhaps try dabbling in local specialties, and Cars are high enough an investment that it's not "boring and conformist" if you buy a civic, necessarily.
Posted by: andrew at May 3, 2009 3:14:06 PM
I prefer boring and conformist in cars - that way I can find parts and service. And that is true of most manufactured items. Rare and unusual is fun to look at but often a pain to maintain. And Apple computers are not artisinal - homebuilt from seperate parts and runnig on Linux - that I'll accept as an artisanl computer.
Posted by: rmark at May 3, 2009 6:19:38 PM
How can consumption itself be imaginative? There is no process of creation or innovation embedded in the act of consumption. If by “imaginative consumption,” Miller means that consumption should signal individuality, then the question becomes how consumption can possibly signal individuality. The act of signaling individuality by subscribing to rules like “never buy brand items” is itself an act of conformity; More importantly, the thinking that consumption can be a signal of individuality is itself a product of the consumerism culture.
Posted by: Jiaming Mao at May 3, 2009 7:10:07 PM
Jiaming: The answer, is, of course, to come up with some peculiar combination of brand name items and non-brand name items that does not conform to any obviously codified rule. For example, in fashion, the person considered most fashionable is rarely the one who wears nothing but basic items, nor the person for whom each individual item of clothing screams at the top of its (metaphorical) lungs. It is the person who accents basic items with individual pieces that draw attention to themselves.
I would also go as far as to say that this is a critical component of class in American culture, and that it is the product of a variety of conflicting cultural influences. The person who is most revered in American mythology is not the one who eats nothing but fast food, nor the one who eats nothing but haute cuisine, but it is the one who can experience and enjoy both these things in equal measure because his/her preferences are sufficiently non-conformist, and therefore, in some culturally determined sense, sufficiently authentic.
This is also why the coolness factor of Tyler's Ethnic Dining Guide is off the charts.
Posted by: Lee at May 3, 2009 8:46:23 PM
"Unimaginable"? Gah!
Posted by: Adam Bee at May 3, 2009 10:46:46 PM
This is just an extension of the old game of snobbishness -- finding some way of buying objects that supports your ability to judge other people.
I think as long as you have an interesting story for why your tastes are the way they are, you can "hold your own" in the snobbishness game.
For example, you might say "one should logically expect interesting purchases to be more expensive, so as a rule I try to make purchases that are as uninteresting as possible, thus keeping my costs down." Frugality is a signal that you would be a good choice as a life partner.
Also, keep in mind that what you signal with a purchase depends greatly on your social crowd. A Walmart purchase could signal frugality, unimaginativeness, even evil.
As with all other varieties of the question "what should I do?", I think a good rule of thumb for developing a consumer consciousness is to expose yourselves to different ways of thinking (e.g. "unconscious american," "organic yuppie," "snobby rich person," "broke art student," "bleeding heart liberal," "steak loving truck driver"), develop a sensitive appreciation for each type, and then follow a dialectical pattern of correction and re-correction as you find the best blend for yourself. Don't stay in the same blend for ever; learn to recognize each type as you would an instrument in an orchestra. Each type is a part of you, and all the types are connected. Learn to make the orchestra sing. Play off of others around you; if everyone you know is playing the violin, bring in an oboe just to make sure things stay lively.
Posted by: mk at May 4, 2009 12:11:02 PM
This is the PUA movement to a T. High numbers of alpha-wannabe douchebags that are incredibly self-centered and impulsive at the same time.
Posted by: Doissy the Douchebag at May 6, 2009 7:03:50 AM
Thanks for all the comments on my book 'Spent'.
This is by far the most thoughtful and intelligence blog discussion I've seen on it so far!
Best wishes - Geoffrey Miller, from Australia
Posted by: Geoffrey Miller at May 13, 2009 1:37:06 AM
Doissy, it's no coincidence that the PUA movement makes a pretense of being grounded in evolutionary psychology.
Posted by: Anon at May 17, 2009 7:32:40 PM
I find similar evidence of the six basic personalities/traits in some of my work, but couldn't disagree more about his commercial consumer comment.
Posted by: HP OmniBook laptop battery at May 18, 2009 8:27:07 AM
Doissy the Douchebag wrote: "This is the PUA movement to a T. High numbers of alpha-wannabe douchebags that are incredibly self-centered and impulsive at the same time."
The PUA movement helps men improve their skill with women in terms of sexually attracting them. This knowledge can be mistaught, executed poorly or used for unsavory purposes.
Posted by: David Lewis at Jun 4, 2009 11:50:59 AM
