Book Review: Spent

Do we really understand what motivates consumers? Do consumers themselves understand what drives them to behave in the ways that they? Evolutionary psychology is a branch of social science which argues that we have inherent underlying motives which we may or may not be aware of that drives our thinking and actions. Grounded in a Darwinian view of the world, it argues that our minds have evolved via natural and sexual selection in the same manner as our physical bodies and that the results of this evolution are powerful drivers of how we behave.

Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism by Geoffrey Miller, first published in 2009, is an excellent and accessible introduction to this emerging field. Miller is a Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New Mexico and he has written an engaging, humorous and insightful book on how evolutionary motives drive our consumption behaviour. Evolutionary psychologists generally focus on four core motives, namely, reproduction, survival, kin selection and reciprocation and the primary focus of Miller’s book is the former. He demonstrates how a significant component of consumption is essentially fitness signalling to attract friends or mates in a manner analogous to the peacock’s tail or lion’s mane. In an interesting cost analysis he shows that the basic essentials for life (air, water, rice) are practically free while those that signal fitness (everything from lipstick, a Rolex or an iPod full of songs) command a significant premium. Proponents of sustainability will find this argument particularly compelling as fitness signalling, by definition, has to be wasteful in order to be effective.

The core of the book then moves on to examine the central six personality dimensions of general intelligence, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, stability and extraversion and how large swathes of consumption is driven by attempts to display some or other of these traits. At the core of Miller’s argument is that we do not need to consume in order to demonstrate these traits and that we have evolved capacities such as language, humour, creativity and kindness that we can use to display our traits. In short, this book is a potent blend of psychology and marketing and is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in either of these topics. Marketers have only recently begun to recognise the potential of evolutionary psychology but it is likely to have a significant influence in the field in the years ahead.