WEBVTT

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You know that you've made it big
when somebody introduces you

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with only one name.

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So I'm like Madonna and Cher now.

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He doesn't have to mention my last name.

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So, thank you all for being here,

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and for waiting for the last talk,

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I can't promise you that I'll be
as exciting as Nomadic massive,

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or as Owen with his mashing up,
but I'll try to keep you entertained.

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So basically, in the past 15 years

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I've been trying to infuse
evolutionary psychology

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into the study of consumption.

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The idea being

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that if you look at these faces,

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of course there are very important
cross-cultural differences,

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that define these people

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but underneath these differences

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there is a bed of human universals

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that are very much rooted
in our common shared human nature.

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And so, to quote E. O. Wilson,
the famed Harvard evolutionary biologist,

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he said that
"the genes hold culture on a leash,"

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to which I would simply add, "the genes
hold consumer behavior on a leash".

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So, of course culture is malleable,

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but it is malleable within
our biological constraints.

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So this idea of "Nature vs. Nurture"

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is one that has come up
in many different fields,

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many different contexts,

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are charismatic leaders born
or are they made?

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So, in the context of consumer behavior

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I'll give you one such example:

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toy preferences, is typically the example
that social scientists use

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to demonstrate that we are socialized

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to be consumers.

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So, little Johnny plays
with the blue truck aggressively

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while little Linda plays with
the pink doll in a very nurturing way,

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and it is this cascade
of gender socialization

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that eventually leads us to be
grown up males or females.

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It turns out
that that's not quite so accurate.

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So let me just very briefly
discuss a few findings

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that demonstrate
that some of these preferences

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are actually quite innate.

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Children who are
in the pre-socialization stage,

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meaning that they don't yet have
the cognitive development

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to be socialized,

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also display this sex-specific
toy preferences.

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Little girls who suffer from
congenital adrenal hyperplasia,

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which is an endocrinological disorder
that masculinizes little girls,

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they tend to then have
toy preferences that are very much like

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little boys'.

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And then, if you do studies
with some of our primate cousins,

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rhesus monkeys and vervet monkeys,

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they have very much the same
sex-specific toy preferences.

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So that puts a bit of a damper on the idea

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that we are just empty minds
who are subsequently sociallized.

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And if you are wondering
why the baby is extremely beautiful,

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that's because of the beauty of my wife

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who is here in the room.

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(Applause)

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That's a belated Valentine's gift.

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(Laughter)

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Now I don't have to pay her
any fancy flowers and so on.

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To give you a sense of how powerful
evolutionary psychology is

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in understanding even daily events,

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I'll just share one example
continuing with the story

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of my little daughter.

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So, when my wife was pregnant
with our daughter Luna,

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of course we got the requisite
two-month ultrasound,

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we put it up very proudly

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on the refrigerator,

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mother in-law came over
with my father in-law,

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and she looks at these images,

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now, these images I should point out,

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they could be those of a lizard,

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they could be those of an ameoba,

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they could be those of an alien,

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yet she looks at it

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and arrestingly says,

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"Oh, my god, Gad,
the baby looks exactly like you."

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(Laughter)

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"He has your profile, can't you see?"

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Now, why would that be related
to evolutionary psychology?

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Well, it turns out
that when children are born,

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around the world, right?

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So this is not specific
to Peruvian culture

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or Israeli culture,

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it's very much a human universal,

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when kids are born,

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usually the mother's side of the family
will very very quickly proclaim

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that the newborn baby
looks exactly like the father.

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The reason for that
is because it's a mechanism,

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it's a cultural mechanism
to try to assuage

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threats of paternity uncertainty.

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But in this case,
this is the first scientific case

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where this mechanism happened in utero.

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So I've already made my daughter famous

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even before she could speak or think.

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So, for the rest of the talk today
I'll talk about some of the research

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that I've been doing,
linking how our survival instinct

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manifests itself in consumer behavior,
and then also our reproductive instinct.

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So, food, of course, is probably
the consumption act

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that is most closely linked
to our survival.

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So if you look at the hummingbird,
he has to eat roughly 1.5 - 3 times

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its body weight per day,
because of its high metabolism,

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in order to be able to survive.

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So, he's got a good reason
why he has to eat so much.

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On the other hand,
'All you can eat' buffets,

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'All you can have' vacation packages,
'supersize me's,

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cater to the same instinct
of hoarding and gorging.

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Unfortunately, we don't have
his metabolic rate, so we end up

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with these dreadful diseases.

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Continuing with the same line of thinking,

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we have this incredible
innate preference for fatty foods,

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few of us prefer raw broccoli
to chocolate mousse,

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or to a juicy steak.

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So, if you look here at the grizzly bears,

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they're eating fatty salmon,

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you know, prior to going into
semi hibernation.

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If you look at the top ten restaurants
around the world,

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they have one thing in common,

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they deliver fatty foods to us,
that is tasty.

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It's not that they have
good advertisements,

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it's not that they have nice jingles.

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It's that they deliver a product
that is perfectly congruent

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with our evolved taste buds.

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and this is exactly what
the Atkins diet did, right?

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The Atkins diet said,
"Hey, you could eat as much as you want

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fatty steak, eggs, you could eat bacon,
and you're going to lose weight."

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Great, sign me up, right?

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Interestingly, though,
cross-cultural differences

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in cullinary traditions,
are also, themselves, due to biology.

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So if you look at cultures
that are predominantly meat-based,

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so look at the top smoked meat sandwich,

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or predominantly vegetable-based,

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or how much spices are used
in a culinary tradition,

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how much salt consumption is used,

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how much pickling happens in a culture,

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each of these culinary traditions
turn out to be adaptations

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to the local environment.

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And what's specifically,

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it's correlated to the latitude
of the country,

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which is of course correlated
to the ambient temperature,

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which is correlated to the density
of the food pathogens in that culture.

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So rather than simply saying
that here we have an example

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of oh, it's due to culture,

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an evolutionary approach
allows you to understand

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what is the ultimate explanation
for that cultural difference.

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Moving on to mating,
something that I think everybody here

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would be interested in.

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If you look at the cardinal,
he's engaging in what's called:

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nuptial gift-giving.

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In many species you offer a gift,
the male cardinal, you could see,

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has a food morsel in his mouth,

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he's saying, "Hey, look,
I can provide for you,

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and as a measure
of how well I can provide for you,

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how about you grant me
sexual access to you?"

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And, of course, we engage
in endless forms,


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as consumers, in exactly this behavior.

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The diamond rings that we have to offer
have to be a costly signal,

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otherwise, the ladies wouldn't be able
to assort the difference between the faker

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and the true suitor.

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Therefore, I have to pay 25%

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of my yearly income
to show you that I am truthful.

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And hopefully then, you will give it up,

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just like the female cardinal.

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(Laughter)

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We use products as sexual signals, right?

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So if you look at the peacock over here,

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the hen seems to be rather uninterested,
and he's saying, "Look at my tail.

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Look how big it is.
Look how symmetric it is.

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Look how iridescent the colors are.
This is why you have to choose me.

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Because my phenotypic quality
is so great."

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Well, I've argued in several of my books

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that consumers do exactly that.

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Many times, we use products
either men or women,

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to improve our position
in the mating market.

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So a few years ago,
with one of my former graduate students,

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John Vongas,
we decided to test this idea.

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We brought in people - not people,
we brought in males into the lab,

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and we had them drive either a fancy,
it's not imagine driving a Porsche,

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they actually drove a Porsche.

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Or they drove a beaten up,
rusted, old sedan,

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in one of two environments,
either in downtown Montreal,

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where everybody could see you,

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or in a semi-deserted highway.

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By the way, try to get a granting agency
to release money,

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and convince them
that you're not going to use the Porsche

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for your own personal sinister pursuits.

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(Laughter)

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Now, what were some
of the dependent measures?

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At the end of each of these conditions,
these driving conditions,

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we collected salivary assays,
which then help us measure

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their fluctuations
in their testosterone levels.

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And what do you think happened?

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When you put young males in the Porsche

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the endocrinology response is outlandish!

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(Laughter)

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Now, we had thought
that, yes, testosterone would go up

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in both environments,
but it would go up a lot more

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when everybody could see you.

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So in downtown Montreal
it would go up a lot more

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than on a semi-deserted highway.

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The guys couldn't give a damn.

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Put me in a Porsche,
the testosterone shot through the roof.

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Just to continue with this point,

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cars are sexual signals,

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this is a study that was done
two years ago

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by some British psychologists.

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These are the actual stimuli
that they used.

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You take the same guy,
you put him in a Ford Fiesta,

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beaten up old car, or in a Bentley,

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and you ask women to rate
this guy in terms

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of how physically attractive he is.

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You're not talking about his status,
just physically,

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how beautiful is this man?

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And you do the same thing with the woman,
and men have to judge it.

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Men couldn't give a damn
the car that the lady was driving.

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On the other hand, the women
when the guy is in the Bentley,

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"Oh my god, he's Brad Pitt."

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When he's driving the other car,
"Oh no, I don't like losers like this."

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OK?

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So again, it shows you how these products

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are quite intoxicating,

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in terms of how it helps us
position ourselves

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in the mating market.

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Of course, not only men
engage in sexual signaling.

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The ladies are also guilty
of such pursuits.

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On the left hand side we've got
a female baboon who is in estrus,

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and she's in estrus, engaging in
conspicuous advertising of her genitalia.

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I think I could speak safely
for all men here,

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that we would not want our human females

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to be conspicuously displaying
their genitalia in this way.

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But, sticking true to the pink theme -
what they certainly do do -

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is that they would dress
much more provocatively

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when they are maximally fertile

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in their menstrual cycle.

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So with one of my doctorate students,
who's here in the room -

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I can't see him
because I am blinded by the light -

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Eric Stenstrom, we've done
a very very thorough study

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where we've looked
at how the menstrual cycle

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affects women's behaviors as consumers.

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One of which is how much do they engage

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in beautification

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as a function of whether they are

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in the luteal phase
or in the fertile phase

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of their menstrual cycle.

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Continuing on
with this idea of sexual signaling.

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A few years ago
I had an undergraduate student

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who at the end of the course
came to me and said,

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"Professor Saad, I have to work with you,
could you hook me up with some project?

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I want to do anything!"

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So I thought about it for a while,
and I said -

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this is a male student -

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I said, "OK, how about if I were
to give you the following project,

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you're going to surf porn sites

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for the next one month."

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(Laughter)

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To which he looked at me
and his eyes told me,

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"Prof. Saad, I love you!"

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(Laughter)

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So, what was the point
of the project, basically?

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I wanted to test

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what evolutionary psychologists
have talked about,

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this idea of a preference
for the hourglass figure,

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which is a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7,

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whether I could actually pick it out

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by doing a content analysis
of how female escorts

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advertise themselves on the Internet.

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So, typically,
you know, my height is 5'3'',

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here are my measurements,
here is my weight,

00:12:45.146 --> 00:12:46.179
here is my fee.

00:12:46.179 --> 00:12:50.813
So, what I had this
very lucky male undergraduate student do

00:12:50.813 --> 00:12:53.519
is just surf different sites,

00:12:53.519 --> 00:12:57.727
he ended up gathering data
of more than 1,000 female escorts.

00:12:57.727 --> 00:12:59.124
(Laughter)

00:12:59.124 --> 00:13:04.542
Right, he was really assiduous
in his pursuit of science,

00:13:04.542 --> 00:13:07.043
and it covered 48 different countries,

00:13:07.043 --> 00:13:08.043
so nobody could say,

00:13:08.043 --> 00:13:09.863
'Oh, but this a Western standard.'

00:13:09.863 --> 00:13:11.563
'Oh, it's due to the Oprah effect.'

00:13:11.563 --> 00:13:14.124
'It's due to Cosmopolitan magazine.'

00:13:14.124 --> 00:13:16.532
We specifically chose cultures

00:13:16.532 --> 00:13:21.185
that were extraordinarily disparate
in terms of the different metrics

00:13:21.185 --> 00:13:23.155
that a culture might be defined on,

00:13:23.155 --> 00:13:24.885
and it turns out that the average

00:13:24.885 --> 00:13:26.917
waist-to-hip ratio is exactly in line

00:13:26.917 --> 00:13:29.615
with what is expected
from an evolutionary perspective.

00:13:29.615 --> 00:13:35.007
Men like a waist-to-hip ratio
that signals nubility and fertility.

00:13:36.571 --> 00:13:40.647
So, continuing very briefly,
how do some of these sex differences

00:13:40.647 --> 00:13:42.164
that I've been talking about

00:13:42.164 --> 00:13:44.551
manifest themselves in other settings?

00:13:44.551 --> 00:13:46.278
Well, if you were a paleontologist,

00:13:46.278 --> 00:13:48.714
and you want to study
the evolution of a species,

00:13:48.714 --> 00:13:51.914
you typically would have gone
through skeletal remains,

00:13:51.914 --> 00:13:54.174
you might go through the fossil records,

00:13:54.174 --> 00:13:57.359
and that would allow you
to reconstruct the phylogenetic

00:13:57.359 --> 00:13:59.007
history of a species.

00:13:59.007 --> 00:14:01.642
Well, of course, our minds
don't fossilize,

00:14:01.642 --> 00:14:05.015
and so we have to find
some alternate fossil record.

00:14:05.015 --> 00:14:08.198
And so, what I have argued
is that we can turn to cultural products

00:14:08.198 --> 00:14:09.775
as our fossil records.

00:14:09.775 --> 00:14:11.152
Because cultural products

00:14:11.152 --> 00:14:13.864
are ultimately created by human minds.

00:14:13.864 --> 00:14:15.806
And so we could do a content analysis

00:14:15.806 --> 00:14:17.402
on these cultural products

00:14:17.402 --> 00:14:20.306
to help us identify
some of the evolutionary forces

00:14:20.306 --> 00:14:23.442
that would have led
to the evolution of the human mind.

00:14:23.442 --> 00:14:26.092
So, romance novels
are almost exclusively read by women,

00:14:26.092 --> 00:14:28.167
around the world,
whether you are from Peru,

00:14:28.167 --> 00:14:29.170
or Egypt or Montreal,

00:14:29.170 --> 00:14:30.743
it's read by women.

00:14:30.743 --> 00:14:33.626
If you, for example,
look at the male archetype,

00:14:33.626 --> 00:14:35.274
the male hero,

00:14:35.274 --> 00:14:38.837
it's almost identical
across all romance novels.

00:14:38.837 --> 00:14:42.656
He's never a short, hourglassed,
beta male who is afraid of his shadow.

00:14:44.002 --> 00:14:46.002
He's larger than life, he's tall,

00:14:46.002 --> 00:14:48.585
he's muscular, he's a neurosurgeon,

00:14:48.585 --> 00:14:50.178
or a king or a prince.

00:14:50.178 --> 00:14:54.845
That's because that particular product
caters to women's evolved fantasies.

00:14:54.845 --> 00:14:57.074
On the other hand, hardcore pornography

00:14:57.074 --> 00:14:59.875
doesn't exist because
there is a patriarchal conspiracy

00:14:59.875 --> 00:15:02.166
to demean women, it exists because

00:15:02.166 --> 00:15:05.722
it caters to a particular penchant in men.

00:15:05.722 --> 00:15:08.803
And so, if you want to understand
some of these sex differences,

00:15:08.803 --> 00:15:11.482
look at these cultural products
that are very successful,

00:15:11.482 --> 00:15:14.022
and you will really understand
quite a bit, not only

00:15:14.022 --> 00:15:16.895
about our commonalities
but also about our differences.

00:15:16.895 --> 00:15:21.219
Next, since we've had
Nomadic Massive and Owen

00:15:21.219 --> 00:15:24.312
talking about music,
this is particularly apropos,

00:15:24.312 --> 00:15:26.343
If you look at songs,

00:15:26.343 --> 00:15:30.342
they're a fantastic stimulus
for looking at some

00:15:30.342 --> 00:15:31.582
of these sex differences.

00:15:31.582 --> 00:15:33.886
So, the things that men and women
sing about,

00:15:33.886 --> 00:15:35.648
are perfectly congruent

00:15:35.648 --> 00:15:37.684
with universal mating preferences.

00:15:37.684 --> 00:15:39.996
So, around the world
men tend to place a lot more

00:15:39.996 --> 00:15:42.623
value on youth and physical beauty

00:15:42.623 --> 00:15:44.006
in prospective mates,

00:15:44.006 --> 00:15:46.475
and around the world
women place a lot more value

00:15:46.475 --> 00:15:48.851
on social status of men.

00:15:48.851 --> 00:15:52.883
Therefore, if you look
at the left-hand examples

00:15:52.883 --> 00:15:56.403
all of these top songs:
Gwen Guthrie, Destiny's Child,

00:15:56.403 --> 00:15:58.494
TLC and Marlena Shaw,

00:15:58.494 --> 00:16:01.076
they're denigrating men
for having low social status.

00:16:01.076 --> 00:16:03.060
'If you think you're going to get with me

00:16:03.060 --> 00:16:04.535
and you don't have any money,

00:16:04.535 --> 00:16:07.704
walk away, idiot,
i'm not interested in you.'

00:16:07.704 --> 00:16:08.768
(Laughter)

00:16:08.768 --> 00:16:11.714
There are no songs that say,
'Hey, Linda, you're not working

00:16:11.714 --> 00:16:14.057
hard at school,
I won't have sex with you.'

00:16:14.057 --> 00:16:15.492
(Laughter)

00:16:15.492 --> 00:16:16.676
Right?

00:16:18.692 --> 00:16:19.722
(Applause)

00:16:19.722 --> 00:16:20.989
Thank you.

00:16:23.953 --> 00:16:27.253
Thank you,
I feel like I'm a comic up here.

00:16:27.253 --> 00:16:28.451
(Laughter)

00:16:28.451 --> 00:16:31.253
And, of course, when men sing
about social status

00:16:31.253 --> 00:16:32.482
they then show off.

00:16:32.482 --> 00:16:33.722
'I've got the goods,

00:16:33.722 --> 00:16:35.223
I've got the Aston Martin.'

00:16:35.223 --> 00:16:37.304
There's a million
songs 'money in the bank',

00:16:37.304 --> 00:16:39.858
I mean, literally,
there is at least ten different

00:16:39.858 --> 00:16:42.426
Hip-Hop artists
that have the exact same title

00:16:42.426 --> 00:16:43.866
'I've got money in the bank,

00:16:43.866 --> 00:16:45.626
you want to get with me.'

00:16:45.626 --> 00:16:48.473
Look at the right-hand corner,
the way that men and women

00:16:48.473 --> 00:16:52.146
navigate in terms of their sexuality
in their song lyrics,

00:16:52.146 --> 00:16:54.326
is drastically different.

00:16:54.326 --> 00:16:55.823
So, Mickey Gilley,

00:16:55.823 --> 00:16:58.783
who is a country music star 
from the mid seventies,

00:16:58.783 --> 00:17:01.814
had a song called:
'Don't the girls all get prettier

00:17:01.814 --> 00:17:03.331
at closing time?'

00:17:03.331 --> 00:17:06.274
In other words, the girl
that men are willing to sleep with

00:17:06.274 --> 00:17:09.064
at eleven o'clock is very different
from the creature

00:17:09.064 --> 00:17:12.738
that they are willing to satisfice with
at three in the morning.

00:17:12.932 --> 00:17:15.636
You don't have too many songs
that say, 'Don't the guys

00:17:15.636 --> 00:17:18.073
get more handsome at closing time?'

00:17:18.073 --> 00:17:21.925
Precisely because the cost
of making a sub-optimal mating choice

00:17:21.925 --> 00:17:23.848
looms much larger for women.

00:17:23.848 --> 00:17:25.554
That's not due to socialization,

00:17:25.554 --> 00:17:29.817
that's due to a basic biological reality
called Parental Investment Theory.

00:17:29.817 --> 00:17:31.730
Same thing for physical attractiveness.

00:17:31.730 --> 00:17:33.791
It's almost always the case,
and by the way,

00:17:33.791 --> 00:17:35.644
it's not only true in English songs,

00:17:35.644 --> 00:17:38.957
it's not Hip-Hop or English,
or soul songs, you could do Hindi songs

00:17:38.957 --> 00:17:43.664
and Arabic songs, and you will find
the exact same phenomena.

00:17:43.664 --> 00:17:46.393
So, in conclusion, exactly on time,

00:17:46.393 --> 00:17:50.592
T. Dobzhansky was a famous evolutionary
geneticist who said that,

00:17:50.592 --> 00:17:54.594
"Nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evolution."

00:17:54.594 --> 00:17:56.621
Well, I would slightly tweak that,
and say,

00:17:56.621 --> 00:18:00.331
Nothing in consumer behavior could ever
make sense without an understanding

00:18:00.331 --> 00:18:02.684
of our evolutionary heritage.

00:18:02.684 --> 00:18:03.716
Thank you very much.

00:18:03.716 --> 00:18:06.414
(Applause)