Title Spent
Author Geoffrey Miller
Year Published 2009
Kind of Book Marketing/Evolution/Psychology
How strongly I recommend it 9/10
My Impressions I really got a lot out of this book. It shifted the way I think about why people buy the things they do. Miller also does a deep dive into the Big 5 personality traits and how people display these traits to others (especially potential sexual partners). I always enjoy reading Miller. He always gets me thinking in new ways.
Date Read April 2019
What question is the author trying to answer?
How can we make sense of our consumer behavior through an evolutionary lens?
Practical Takeaways
Don't say "ironic" when you mean "coincidental"
Next Christmas make all the gifts yourself that you give to friends and family
List the ten most expensive items you have ever paid for (including degrees) then list the ten itmes that have given you the most happiness and satisfaction. Compare the lists
Invest in good widows that keep heat in instead of pouring money into heating bill
Start a blog instead of displaying your verbal ability with a fancy degree
Choose to wear and own objects that are good conversation stories and have good stories (where did you get your bag could be; Amazon. Or when I was peru I was staying a hostel….)
Ask what the story is behind items of clothing you wear
If you decide you simply must have the product new, branded, at full retail price, put it on your birthday or holiday wish list, and let somebody else buy it for you
Wait three years before buying new technologies
Buy it in generic, replica, or trickle-down form
Make an item you need or want (jewelry, stiching pants etc)
Borrow more things from friends, relatives, and neighbors (especially not great friends for Benjamin Franklin Effect(
Rent it (car, tux, etc)
Buy it used
Look for it at the library first
Don't get a college degree just for signaling purposes. There are much cheaper ways to signal your intelligence to people
Ask yourself if you really need something and if it is really going to fulfill you before buying it
Check your credit card report every 6 months for errors
Groom yourself
Make sure your house plants are healthy
Invest in items that you only have to buy once (cast iron pots and pans, nice suit, etc)
Don't take psychedelics if you're low in stability
Take psychedelics to show openness and mental stability
Take the Raven IQ test
Think about what you wear and do says about your Big 5 personality rating
Don't pay for the label
Don't spend your money on a fancy car
Focus on as well as focusing on attracting people you want in your life, wear, do, say things that will repelling people you don't want in your life
Drink tap water
Think of your possessions as signals first and material objects second
Think of your personal style and possessions not just as ways to attract people you're compatible with, but also as ways to keep away people you're not compatible with. (eg.
Get a pet or plant and take care of it well to signal conscientiousness to a potential long-term partner
Spend two months salary on an engagement ring
(for men) display low-agreeableness when attracting a woman. Display high-agreeableness once the relationship is established (to signal you can be a good long-term mate)
Don't send mixed signals such as indicators of being high agreeableness and low agreeableness (eg. Tattoo sleeve but also
Think of the story associated with a product you buy or wear (eg. "where'd you get the necklace?" "It was my Grandfathers, he wore it in WW2" vs. "I bought it at Macys"
Think of the products your wear as conversation starters
Big Ideas
There are too many humans on Earth to go back to a small-group hunter/gather style of living
The Buddha, Laozi, Epicurus, Thoreau, Engels, Margaret Mead, and the Unabomber were all advocates of returning to a small-group hunter/gather style of living
People are (unconsciously) motivated to virtue signal
Most women's consumption of clothes and accessories is done in order to win status amongst other women (not to attract men)
Female status hierarchies are important in predicting a females access to food
Consumer products roughly fall into two categories
1)Things we buy to win the approval other others and gain status
2)Things we buy to receive pleasure (regardless of who knows we bought it)
Marketing underlies everything in modern human culture
Intellectuals don't understand marketing
Modern marketing aims to deemphasize the product itself and to emphasize the product's mental associations and promised lifestyle that comes with buying the product (ie. Selling a story not a product)
If you have the free time and education to read a non-fiction book you are in the elite top percent of all privileged people in the world
We crave food high in fat, salt and sugar for 2 reasons
We evolved to crave these foods
Powerful industry groups market and subsidize these foods to make money
The things we need to survive our inexpensive
But
The things we desire to signal our status to others are expensive
It is foolish to toast each other's wealth
It is wise to toast each other's health
SP: health is more important than wealth
A person's status is effected by their
Beauty
Creativity
Emotional stability
Leadership ability
We overestimate how much people actually care about the products we buy and display to signal status
When we first see a stranger we notice
Their size
Their shape
Their age
Their sex
Their race
Whether or not they are familiar
Whether or not we are attracted to them
If they are sick, injured, pregnant
What their emotional state is
We believe that people act more like their "true" selves when they believe they are alone
Hip-hop culture (and men who display it either in their clothing or musical taste) display traits of low conscientiousness, low agreeableness, and high promiscuity to potential mates
Many white boys who embrace hip-hop culture (eg. How they dress, what they listen to, how they act) may be turning off women who are not interested in traits like low conscientiousness, low agreeableness, and high promiscuity
Inauthentic consumer status signals (eg. Bad boy ripped jeans and tattoos worn by a guy who is not a bad boy) may fool some people in the short term
But
Inauthentic consumer status signals (eg. Bad boy ripped jeans and tattoos worn by a guy who is not a bad boy) will not fool anyone in the long term
Our behaviors are more important for signaling our status than the consumer goods we buy/wear
Marketers try to convince us that the consumer goods we buy/wear are more important for signaling our status to others than our behaviors
Advertisers hint that their product will gaurentee the buyer certain things (eg. Sex, a hot girlfriend, friends) without stating it explicitly
Because
If advertisers explicitly promised some of the things they hint their product will give the consumer (eg. Sex, a hot girlfriend, friends) they could be held responsible if it didn't actually deliver what they promised it would
Also
Consumers are able to maintain plausible deniability for their motivations for buying a product if the product doesn't explicitly state what it will give the consumer
Over the course of human evolution our capacity to judge whether another person's signals are honest or fake has improved
Over the course of human evolution our ability to deceive others with fake signals has improved
Advertising for Luxury Products has two aims
1)Make a potential customer want to buy
2)Show non-potential customers that the product being advertised should be coveted
Most BMW ads are not directed at buyers
Most BMW ads are directed at making non-buyers covet BMW, so that BMW will contain the coveted status for the small percent who actually do buy one
People tend to give the most attention/fondness to their healthiest/most attractive relatives
For the products we wear and own to be reliable signals of the people we are they must be tested with and compared with our actual behavior
Each individual's body only contains minor differences
But
Human's place a great deal of importance over the minor differences in each individual's body
Low agreeable (aka bad) boys and girls can be more sexually attractive for short-term mating
Generally people like people who have similar ratings to them on the Big 5
Generally high openness people like high openness people and low openness people like low openness people
People who are high on a personality trait called (self-monitoring) are especially prone to monitor and shift their displayed personality as a function of their social environment.
People seeking long-term partners value stability higher in a partner (than those seeking short-term partners)
Each trait on the Central 6 not correlated with one another (eg. No correlation between a person's openness and extroversion)
People less open than us seem boring, dull, conventional, and conformist,
whereas
People more open than us seem eccentric, bizarre, disruptive, threatening, or even psychotic
The more you deviate from an average level of openness, the fewer people you are likely to attract
Because
In general people are attracted to people with the same level of openness as themselves
Indie, alternative, jazz, world, and hip-hop are enjoyed more by people high in openness
Pop, country, gospel, and classic rock are enjoyed more by people low in openness
People's openness, extraversion, and individualism tends to peak in young adulthood
Because
As a person's immune system becomes weaker they become less open, extraverted, and individualistic
Because
Evolutionarily openness, extraversion, and individualism posed threats to individuals with those traits
Because
Contact with foreign/new people is more likely to cause a person to get sick or get introduced to an alien parasite or virus
Therefore
The best way to promote democracy, science, secularism, peace, ethnic harmony, free trade, and tourism in developing nations may be to reduce their parasite load through better medicine and sanitation
People high in openness are more likely to believe false information and conspiracy theories
People high in openness are more likely to make potentially embarrassing faux pas
High openness is only beneficial if the environment is especially safe
People (young adults especially) signal their high openness and high stability by "surviving" things like powerful hallucinogens and mind-bending books/movies
The trait conscientiousness may has evolved only in the past 10,000 years
Because
Conscientiousness has only become an asset in the last 10,000 years when we switched from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agrarian one (which requires much more planning)
Good hygiene, grooming, and physical health are signals of high conscientiousness
Men tend to show off their assertiveness and anti-conformity when trying to impress women
Women tend to show off their agreeableness and conformity when trying to impress men
Loud public displays of one's political ideology (eg. Marches) can function as a courtship ritual to signal to potential suitors (though this is not the only reason people take part in them)
People tend to shift from being more liberal in their youth to more conservative as they reach middle age
Because
As people reach middle age they start to become more socially dominant and have higher earning power
SP: Conservative policies tend to benefit those who are socially dominant and have high earning power and liberal policies tend to benefit those who are not socially dominant and have low earning power
Many people believe that having a worldview based in Evolutionary psychology is an indicator of conservatism, disagreeableness, and selfishness
Because
Many people associate Evolutionary psychology with 1860s Social Darwinism
An Evolutionary Psychology worldview is an indicator of liberalism, agreeableness, and altruism
We rationalize large purchases by telling ourselves that over several years the cost-per-use will pay for it self
Rarely do large purchases make financial sense even if you account for how long it will last you
Items/clothing/jewelry you make yourself signals more positive things to other people than items/clothing/jewelry you buy from a manufacturer
Surprising Facts
Narcissistic personality disorder effects 1% of the population
Teenagers reach puberty earlier today than in prehistoric conditions because of high-fat diets
Synthetic rubies (synthetic corundum) contain the exact same aluminum oxide as real rubies and sapphires, but can be made larger, purer (free of dirt) and more evenly colored. Real rubies cost a thousand times as much, because their rarity makes them more desirable
Children with down syndrome, autism, or congenital blindness are subject to much higher rates of parental abuse, neglect, and homicide.
It is common practice for editors of models (in magazines or porn etc.) to use photoshop to whiten the scleras of their eyes (because white scleras are a sign of health and virility)
Shyness is a combination of low extraversion and low stability in the big 5
Across cultures, women always show higher average scores than men on agreeableness, conscientiousness, and lower average scores on stability.
High self-esteem is correlated with attractiveness, openness, intelligence, stability, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness
General intelligence has a modest positive correlation with openness
On average Liberals are higher in openness, agreeableness, and lower in conscientiousness than conservatives
General intelligence (IQ) correlates positively with physical symmetry of the face and body as well as semen quality in males
Bigger brains are correlated with higher intelligence
General intelligence and brain size are highly heritable
Looking at photographs of parasites and disease symptoms has been shown to make people temporarily more xenophobic
Women's immune system weakens during their first trimester so that their body does not reject the fetus as an alien parasite
Women in their first trimester show higher xenophobia because their immune systems are weaker in order that their bodies don't reject the fetus as an alien parasite
People's openness, extraversion, and individualism tends to peak in young adulthood
Openness is correlated with psychosis
Openness is correlated with creativity
High openness + low stability = high risk of mental illness
Conscientiousness is lower on average in juveniles and matures slowly with age
Diamond makers recommend that men spend two months salary on an engagement ring
Mating-primed males show especially strong nonconformity when they make subjective judgments about which consumer product they would prefer. Mating-primed females show strong conformity.
About 45% of the world's energy budget is used to heat and cool buildings
Unknown Terms
Conspicuous consumption: the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical.
Status Products: consumer products we buy in order to display our desirable traits to others or to win status amongst others.
Life history Theory: A branch of evolutionary theory which points out that there are trade offs between a species goal to survive and their goal to reproduce (eg. A male elephant seal who starves to death in order to breed. A male peacock who risks death by predators with its large display of feathers)
Status: "anything that provokes social interest, attraction, or deference."
Peahen: a female peafowl. Ie. Peacock is only the name for the male
Fitness Indicators: physical or behavioral aspects of an animal which signal to the opposite sex that they posses good genes (and therefore are a good candidate to mate with) (eg. Faces, voices, hair, skin, height, male beards, upper-body muscle mass, humor, art, music, creativity, intelliegence etc.)
Life-History Theory: the study of how organisms allocate their resources, energy, and time to different patterns of growth and behavior across their life spans.
Self-Monitoring: a personality trait which monitors how much a persons shifts their behavior and personality to the social environment they're in or the person their around
Evolutionary Personality Psychology: a field in psychology which suggests that human personality variation is a meaningful and relevant source of human diversity, and that different combinations of heritable personality traits biologically prepare individuals to exploit the different social niches they inhabit.
Utilitarian goods: consumer goods which are valued for their practicality (eg. An axe)
Hedonic goods: consumer goods which are valued for their subjective pleasure (eg. Ice cream)
Positional goods: consumer goods which are valued for their status-signaling power (eg. Diamond earrings)
Credentialism: the overemphasis on diplomas or degrees in giving jobs or conferring social status