Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology
www.jsecjournal.com – 2008, 2 (2): 69-73.
Book Review
LOOKING THROUGH THE EVOLUTIONARY LENS:
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND EVOLUTIONARY
PSYCHOLOGY
Michael Camargo
State University of New York, New Paltz
Kelly L. Donahue
State University of New York, New Paltz
The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption. By Gad Saad. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates:
Mahwah, New Jersey, 2007; ISBN: 080585150X
In his book, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption, Gad Saad has done for
consumer research what many other scholars have done for other disciplines (e.g.,
Gottschall & Wilson, 2006; Jones & Goldsmith, 2005; Nesse & Williams, 1996). This
book provides yet another example of the importance and utility of evolutionary
psychology (EP) in an area currently void of any evolutionary theory. Throughout the
book, Saad presents research on consumer behavior and views it through an evolutionary
lens, illustrating parallels between different consumer behaviors, marketing strategies,
and our evolved human nature. At the same time, he challenges the social constructionist
view that all human behavior is learned through socialization and suggests that our
behavior may be, at least in part, affected by our evolved human nature. Throughout, he
suggests that EP can aid consumer research by predicting when a researcher might expect
to find evolved similarities versus learned differences in consumers in all parts of the
world. Saad takes a similar approach to that of Carroll (2005) by applying what McGuire
and Troisi (1998) labeled behavior systems (functional and causally related patterns of
behavior). Originally used to identify human behavioral patterns as a means of
understanding mental disorders, Saad applied behavior systems to the identification of
general themes in consumer marketing. The behavioral systems of focus are
reproduction, survival, kin selection, and reciprocal altruism. He demonstrates the lack of
evolutionarily informed hypotheses in the consumer research field, resulting in
disconnected, unorganized findings and he graciously demonstrates the current ubiquity
of evolutionary principles in the field of consumer research that has been unnoticed. The
goal of this book is, “…to demonstrate that consumer behavior cannot be accurately
understood, nor fully investigated without the necessary infusion of biological and
Darwinian-based phenomena that have shaped our human nature (xvii).”
In the first two chapters Saad provides a rich overview of the field of
evolutionary psychology and consumer research, and discusses the current dependence
on the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) that underlies
most consumer research. The SSSM posits that human behavior can be explained
exclusively through culture and learning – that the blank-slate metaphor for the human
mind need not be questioned.
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Looking Through the Evolutionary Lens
In his analysis, he suggests that the majority of consumer research to date has
focused on domain-general, proximate-level theorizing, thus largely ignoring
evolutionary influences. He emphasizes this point by analyzing several main areas of
interest to consumer researchers, including learning, motivation, culture, decision
making, perception, attitude formation and change, emotions, and personality. He
contends that humans and their behaviors are shaped just as much by their innate biology
as by their surrounding environments and life experiences, and that incorporating
evolutionary explanations into consumer research would further enhance the
understanding of consumer phenomena.
In a subsequent section on human consumption behavior, Saad proposes that the
four Darwinian behavioral systems, or modules, of reproduction, survival, kin selection,
and reciprocal altruism, more effectively explain the consumption patterns of humans
than the SSSM does. Each of these modules can be viewed as a set of strategies that
solved specific problems over our species’ phylogenetic history. The reproductive
module solves recurring problems related to mate choice (e.g., the reproductive success
of females is limited compared to males, and therefore females are less likely to be as
promiscuous). The survival module solves problems related to individual survival in a
specific environment (e.g., a fear of snakes). The kin selection module solves problems
related to the survival of one’s genes in the subsequent generation, creating behavioral
patterns that are expressed as altruism towards one’s kin. The reciprocal altruism module
solves the problem of living in large, genetically unrelated groups, where cooperation
among non-kin is necessary for individual survival. He begins his argument with a
discussion of sex differences and contends that the social constructionist view is
backwards, in that products and marketing ploys do not shape our understanding of the
world. Rather, he argues, these products and marketing designs accurately reflect our
evolved human nature. A compelling example provided is that of toy preferences. He
reviews Berenbaum and Hines’ (1992) study of children’s’ sex-typed toy preferences
from a sample of children diagnosed with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a disorder that
results in girls who have masculine traits and behaviors. The study found that the girls
with this disorder had an increased preference for stereotypical masculine toys. This
result was found despite the parents’ attempts at socialization. An evolutionary account
of this phenomenon suggests that males and females prefer specific toy designs (i.e.,
males prefer motion; females prefer form and color) because the presence or lack of
androgen predisposes the visual system to attend to specific objects in the environment.
This sex-specific attention bias enables male children to practice skills related to hunting
and female children to practice skills related to foraging and the caring of infants, thus
increasing their reproductive success (Alexander, 2003). He also discusses the reliance of
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs by those in the consumer research field, and views
conspicuous consumption, the spending of money on goods and leisure activities that
serve to advertise one’s wealth and status (Veblen, 1899), as flying in the face of this
theory. Saad points out that while Maslow’s hierarchy makes sense intuitively, it does not
explain the occurrence of poor people spending money on status-related items. He
suggests that conspicuous consumption can be viewed as a handicap used to signal one’s
social status.
Saad then goes on to demonstrate how a majority of advertising and media
content focuses on masculinity and femininity from a social constructionist perspective.
He argues that instead of focusing on culture-specific cues, more universal applications
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can be identified and thus applied by using an evolutionary framework that identifies sexspecific mating preferences. He demonstrates this idea by pointing out that many
advertisement slogans already cater to at least one of the four Darwinian modules.
Advertisement slogans that address an individual’s looks (e.g., the Vichy Skin Care
slogan, “Health is vital. Start with healthy looking skin.”) play into an evolved strategy to
use biological traits (in this case healthy looking skin) as an assessment of mate value
(the reproductive module). Other slogans, such as Sprite’s “Obey your thirst,” Jif peanut
butter’s “Choosy mothers choose Jif,” and State Farm Insurance’s “Like a good neighbor,
State Farm is there,” map onto the survival, kin selection, and reciprocal altruism
modules, respectively. Saad argues that these slogans are so successful because they play
directly into our evolved strategies that have increased the survival and reproductive
success of our ancestors throughout our species’ evolutionary history.
Saad then attempts to illustrate the role evolution plays in the formation of
culture. He provides an overview of many of the most popular forms of cultural
expression, mainly television shows, music themes, religion, self-help books, music
videos, and literature and discusses the currently accepted explanations for these (mainly
that they create culture). He contends that all of these forms of cultural expression
contain within them reference to at least one of the four Darwinian modules, and exist in
their current form because they are accurate depictions of human existence, making them
plausible and, more importantly, marketable to the consumer. For example, the sitcom 8
Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter concerns a father who is constantly struggling to
protect his daughter from potential male suitors. Saad argues that the premise of this
show is successful because it plays into a specific aspect of human mating psychology,
and that a show titled, 8 Rules for Dating my Teenage Son, would be evolutionarily
irrelevant, making it less plausible and less marketable. He also explores the Darwinian
etiologies of the seven deadly sins, suggesting that sloth, envy, gluttony, lust, pride,
revenge, and greed are universal human weaknesses, which manifest themselves mainly
due to a mismatch between the current environment and that of the Pleistocene.
“Mismatch Theory” argues that organisms have an evolved set of behavioral and
emotional strategies (or behavioral patterns), preserved by natural selection, that
increased an individual’s reproductive success in the specific environment where these
strategies evolved, but no longer provide the same benefit in the current environment. He
contends that the “Seven Deadly Sins” are expressed through numerous acts of sexspecific “dark-side” consumption behaviors, including pornographic addictions,
compulsive buying, eating disorders, and pathological gambling. He again demonstrates
problems associated with the SSSM’s attempt to explain these phenomena and suggests
that more ultimate, domain-specific, evolutionary theorizing would assist researchers in
identifying the forces that can predispose individuals to succumb to such “dark-side”
consumption acts.
One criticism of this book is that Saad has tackled two very large problems,
mainly the benefit of applying EP principles to current consumer behavior research, as
well as the role of our evolutionary lineage in shaping our current behaviors, in a scant
276 pages. Although both of these topics are undoubtedly related to one another, a lot of
information and novel ideas have been densely packed together. Obviously this criticism
is more the result of a compromise between publisher and author, as opposed to a lack of
knowledge on the topic, however, certain aspects of this book could have been
immensely enhanced by a more thorough discussion. For example, a closer look
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“Mismatch Theory” and the differences between our current environment and the
Pleistocene that may place some “dark-side” consumption behaviors in a more logical
light. Furthermore, the topics of black-market consumption, as well as the consumption
of leisure are never addressed. Do these types of consumption behaviors map just as
easily onto the four Darwinian modules as the other types of consumption behaviors that
have been presented? Are there other types of consumer behavior that do not seem to
have a Darwinian etiology? A look at these other types of consumption behaviors may
have further strengthened Saad’s argument.
Saad concludes his thesis by showing how EP can enrich consumer behavior
research. He suggests that one of the main benefits of taking a Darwinian perspective to
consumer research would be to permit researchers to address scientific issues at both
proximate and ultimate levels. He also suggests that a Darwinian perspective would
permit consumer researchers to recognize the importance of both domain-general and
domain-specific mental modules and theorizing. The SSSM sees the mind as an
accumulation of general-purpose, domain-independent mental processes and algorithms,
as demonstrated by behaviorism, various cognitive approaches, and the “cost-benefit”
framework. In contrast, EP views the mind as consisting of Darwinian modules that have
each evolved to solve very specific survival problems. Thus, the process that the mind
uses to solve one adaptive problem is not necessarily the same process that would be used
to solve a different one. Unlike the ideas proposed by domain-general theorizing, the
processes that the mind uses to solve a specific problem are not necessarily transferrable
to other domains. Currently, most consumer researchers use domain-general theorizing,
producing vast amounts of unconnected findings, and would be greatly supplemented by
the application of domain-specific theorizing.
Throughout the book, Saad illustrates the vast field of knowledge currently
untapped by consumer researcher and provides the means by which EP can be used to
understand consumer behavior. In doing so, he has provided the field of consumer
research with a new, more unifying perspective to work from and has made a strong case
for the importance of EP in understanding consumer behavior. At the same time, he has
also addressed one of the most salient debates of our time; what determines human
behavior, our evolved human nature or socialization? He concludes that either theory on
its own cannot adequately explain the myriad of human consumption behaviors, and only
an overarching framework that incorporates both evolutionary theorizing and culturally
learned behaviors can address the countless behaviors that make us human.
Received April 7, 2008; Revision Received April 30, 2008; Accepted May 5, 2008.
References
Alexander, G.M. (2003). An evolutionary perspective of sex-typed toy preferences: Pink,
blue, and the brain. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32, 7-14.
Berenbaum, S.A., & Hines, M. (1992). Early androgens are related to childhood sextyped toy preferences. Psychological Science, 3, 203-206.
Carroll, J. (2005). Literature and evolutionary psychology. In D. Buss (Ed.), The
Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 931-952). New York: Wiley.
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Gottschall, J., & Wilson, D.S. (Eds.) (2006). The Literary Animal: Evolution and the
Nature of Narrative. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Jones O.D., & Goldsmith T.H. (2005). Law and behavioral biology. Columbia Law
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McGuire, M., & Troisi, A. (1998). Darwinian Psychiatry. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Nesse, R.M., & Williams, G.C. (1996). Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian
Medicine. New York: Vantage Books.
Saad, G. (2007). The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption. Mahwah, New Jersey:
Erlbaum.
Tooby J., & Cosmides L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J.H.
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Veblen T. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: MacMillan.
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