By acquiring certain objects, we are simply acting like social primates trying to impress. If we succeed, it is another story, warns the psychologist Geoffrey Miller to our editor Pablo Colado .
They say the world of 2006 has disappeared. That out of the rubble of the economic hecatomb is emerging alow cost humanity, cheaper, less wasteful and frivolous, more attentive to the essential. That we no longer take out the credit card at the slightest provocation. But does anyone really think that if the famous green shoots end up taking root, we will no longer be slaves to that mysterious impulse that makes many of us salivate at the prospect of getting lost among the labyrinthine departments of a Scandinavian furniture megastore?
Yes, there are those who already see certain changes in the mood of Western society. Among them,Geoffrey Miller (1965), professor at the University of New Mexico, in the USA This psychologist has recently publishedSpent, abook on the consumerist facet of the human beingwhich aroused fiery praise and fierce criticism in England and his own country. Miller explains for VERY INTERESTING in what way, in his opinion,the crisis is changing our behavior😕 It has forced many people to rethink their lifestyle, and to redefine priorities regarding their time and energy. We are realizing thatsimplicity and sustainability are not a simple fad for living room ecologists: it is an economic necessity. Young people, for example, go to social networks likeFacebook to show their personality traits, instead of looking for money to buy objects and display them in front of others?
Geoffrey Miller is a member of theevolutionary or darwinian psychology, a scientific discipline with just 20 years of life. Its objective is to show thatthe keys to human behavior were set in prehistory, when man acquired his main weapons to survive and have reproductive success. Or what is the same, to spread their genes. As stated by the psychologist Gad Saad in his bookThe evolutionary bases of consumption, the mind of our species “contains Darwinian modules that have evolved to solve problems ofsurvival“During the Pleistocene, between 600,000 and 100,000 years ago.” We come into the world with a set of biological imperatives that are shaped by life experiences, “adds this professor from the John Molson School of Business in Canada.
Following evolutionary psychologists, innate programming is a determining factor in explaining why we behave the way we behave. The environment and education also weigh, of course, but up to a point. Hank Davis, a Canadian expert who has just published a book with the eloquent title ofCave logic, applies it tosuperstitions: the old excess of caution to be well fed and escape predators leads us to discover causes and effects or patterns even where there are none. For this reason, if our team scores a win one day when we are wearing a green shirt, we will be tempted to put it back on the next game. The palemind is that recalcitrant.
Geoffrey Miller has made a name for himself among his peers for the importance he places onthe competition to get a partner and have childrenin that wiring of our brain. In a magazine reviewTime about his bookSpent, the journalist wrote: “Like Sigmund Freud, Miller sees sex everywhere.” The aforementioned qualifies:? I do not respect Freud too much. It is true that I defend the importance ofsexual selection in human evolutionBut that is different from thinking that there are unconscious libidinal drives behind everything that people do. I believe that sexual selection shaped the adaptations, instincts, and preferences that made us most attractive in prehistory. For example,verbal creativity and humor proved to be attractive traits, so the young men had good reasons to be funny during the flirtation. Which does not mean that trying to have sex explains such creativity?
According to this vision, we remainsocial primates in a super-competitive marketwhere we are impelled to show off our charms to take the cat, or the cat, to the water, although we are not aware of it. In his previous book,The Mating MindMiller explained in detail how many of the exclusively human qualities – art, music, intelligence … – evolved, above all, with a sexual purpose. Because, as with the rest of the animals, our body and our behavior are a showcase of genetic quality. Around 1990, biologists coined the concept of expensive signaling to explain the enormous effort invested by living things for the sole purpose of transmitting information about themselves. ? Since Darwin we know that animals are basically machines to survive and reproduce; We now also know that they achieve much of their reproductive success through advertising and marketing themselves ?, the American psychologist writes in Spent.
Indeed, the crackling nature ofphysiological signalsthat they are nothing more thanaggressive self-promotion campaigns: the tail of the peacock, the song of the bird, the courtship dances, the pheromones, the mane of the lion, the antlers of the elk … Such displays involve an extra expenditure of time and energy, which is the same as proclaiming : “Hey, I’m in good health, I’m a good match!”
Humans are no exception in this hysterical and ruthless game to attract attention, with the difference that we have creatednew ways of selling ourselves, and many of them cost money. Miller explains it this way: “Young people, for example, have an insatiable thirst for what to wear, what is fashionable. In fact, they try to discern which products best promote their personality traits, tastes and abilities.” And here consumerism would come on the scene, or a certain type ofexhibitionist consumerism, an indirect technique of making ourselves knownnot only to impress the opposite sex, but also to attract friends, relatives and allies.
Very revealing in this sense are the experiments carried out byVladas Griskevicius, from Arizona State University, and other psychologists. After dividing the individuals into the categories of “looking for a mate” and “unavailable”, they were made to imagine that they had gotten a big pinch in the lottery. The conclusion that emerged from the questionnaires is that the men in heat spent much more on luxuries than the rest of the interviewees. Not surprisingly, the 18- to 35-year-old male demographic is viewed as a gold mine by businesses.
As Geoffrey Miller suggests,consumerism in western society has something insane. He even compares it to himnarcissistic disorder, which manifests itself through two dimensions: the need to seek selfish pleasure and to make it clear to others at all times that we are the pear. In general, consumer items, not counting basic necessities, fulfill one of these two functions, or both. Imagine that we walk around a department store with two baskets: in one we put the products that we enjoy alone and in others those that we do not care that others see or perceive. Sometimes it is obvious: video games, alcoholic beverages or porn movies belong to the first class, and to the second class, jewelry, perfume and designer clothes. However, we will not always have it so clear. “Far more goods than we think are conceived or advertised as projectors of our narcissism,” Miller writes. In which basket would we put, for example, an iPhone? Without a doubt, it is a wonderful device that allows us to do a lot of things, but also, thanks to its cool design and the prestige of its brand, it is very cool to have it.
With their market research, companies try to enter our minds to channel or enhance this narcissistic fruition. And although intuition often works for them, Geoffrey Miller believes that they are still in a prescientific stage. ? Recent findings in evolutionary psychology, personality and intelligence are ignored in business schools. They have a gap of at least 30 years except in two fields: social psychology and decision-making ?, he explains. According to him, experts inmarketing they still fragment markets into compartments as old-fashioned as races, nationalities, religions and classes, without attending to the individual traits that truly distinguish us.
At first glance,eye-catching consumer itemsThey serve to display material well-being, status – a more diffuse concept related to the admiration we arouse in others – and a taste for certain things, which is useful to send signals to people of our own kind. But in reality, the brain of thehomo sapiensfinely tuned in the Stone Age, it would be a natural detector of other dimensions very defined by current psychology and, as Miller indicates, absolutely ignored by the science of science.marketing. We talk about theintelligenceand of the so-calledbig five o gofive personality factors: extraversion, emotional stability, agreeable character, seriousness or conscientious demeanor, and open-mindedness.
The theory ofbig five It began to take shape in the 1930s, when psychologists Gordon Allport and HS Odbert collected nearly 18,000 English words that defined the various facets of human character to find common patterns. After many syntheses and academic discussions, in the end there was a certain consensus in limiting the studies to the five mentioned components, which can be measured by reliable questionnaires and, according to experiments carried out in the 90s, they would be transmitted by genes approximately 50% .
If we try to understand the behavior of theman consumensis-uHomo shopping-, then three dimensions matter especially, which are the following:
1. Seriousness.Punctuality, planning and order probably began to become an evolutionary advantage about 10,000 years ago, with the invention of agriculture and livestock. It has several ways of exteriorizing itself, such as taking care of a pet, keeping grandmother’s fragile dishes or having a house with a vegetable garden and garden. All of this requires being cautious and scrupulous.
2. Pleasant character.The powerful commercial machinery built around the custom of gifts – Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Mother’s Day … – is supported by the inclination to put oneself in the shoes of others and be benevolent, courteous and grateful. It is a rare product of natural selection that transcends biological selfishness. It is also revealed in behaviors such as social etiquette, with which we demonstrate extreme control of our impulses. Some young men try to imply that they score low on this factor; for example, thundering the ears of pedestrians with their motorcycles or at the wheel of their tuned cars. They may be successful in sporadic romances, but it is the agreeable character that cements long relationships.
3. Open-mindedness.Very important for creativity and cultural advancement, being strong in this trait does not guarantee sympathy or understanding from others. A recent study carried out by North American biologists Corey Fincher, Randy Thornhill, Mark Schaller and Damian Murray relates the cosmopolitanism and tolerance to the stranger of certain cities with the risk of their populations contracting infections: the greater the number of cases, the greater the closure. Another even more curious research affirms that xenophobia increases in pregnant women during the first three months of pregnancy, when the defenses are lower. Extrapolating to the realm of the purely mental, behaviors such as the consumption of designer drugs or certain unconventional or directly psychotronic cultural products could serve to reveal the psychological immunity of the spiritual adventurer.
To these three representatives of the big five must be added theintelligence. There are obvious ways to bring it up, like carrying around certain books or magazines or flaunting technologically advanced gadgets. Likewise, the bachelor’s degrees, courses, doctorates, seminars, masters and other certifications of intellectual achievement, which can adorn our curriculum or the office wall, should also be considered as guarantees of our brilliance.
Geoffrey Miller’s final conclusion is that buying things turns out to be a lousy strategy to flaunt the aforementioned mental and psychological dimensions: “The edifice of narcissistic consumption is based on the questionable premise that others really notice what we acquire and we teach. Sometimes they do, but many times they don’t. We overestimate the semiotic power of those articles. ” And he gives as an example the women who buy Prada bags or Manolo Blahnik shoes: how many heterosexual men notice they are wearing them?
The radar to penetrate the characteristics and emotions of our fellow men is so fine-tuned by millennia of evolution as social animals that it is difficult to give a hoot. As with those ladies who vainly try to bury their years under thick layers of makeup or visits to the operating room, a small talk or a meal dismantles any scenery. Thephysical appearance and language -verbal and non-verbal-they offer a business card that is difficult to disguise.
In the last and controversial chapters ofSpent, Miller gives advice and even proposes tax policies forescape from what he calls “the illusion of consumerism”. Many will be stirred by your claim that shopping at department stores or chains involves laziness and little imagination. We asked him if he leads by example in his private life: “My wife and daughter, frugal and thrifty by nature, are very helpful to me. No one has that much willpower to resist alone. We need family support. , friends and neighbors who also understand the risks of consumerism. “
