The Consuming Instinct | Gad Saad | TEDxConcordia

Marketing Proffesor Gad Saad discusses the evolutionary roots of our consuming instinct.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

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

with only one name.

So I'm like Madonna and Cher now.

He doesn't have to mention my last name.

So, thank you all for being here,

and for waiting for the last talk,

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

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

So basically, in the past 15 years

I've been trying to infuse
evolutionary psychology

into the study of consumption.

The idea being

that if you look at these faces,

of course there are very important
cross-cultural differences,

that define these people

but underneath these differences

there is a bed of human universals

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

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

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

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

So, of course culture is malleable,

but it is malleable within
our biological constraints.

So this idea of "Nature vs. Nurture"

is one that has come up
in many different fields,

many different contexts,

are charismatic leaders born
or are they made?

So, in the context of consumer behavior

I'll give you one such example:

toy preferences, is typically the example
that social scientists use

to demonstrate that we are socialized

to be consumers.

So, little Johnny plays
with the blue truck aggressively

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

and it is this cascade
of gender socialization

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

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

So let me just very briefly
discuss a few findings

that demonstrate
that some of these preferences

are actually quite innate.

Children who are
in the pre-socialization stage,

meaning that they don't yet have
the cognitive development

to be socialized,

also display this sex-specific
toy preferences.

Little girls who suffer from
congenital adrenal hyperplasia,

which is an endocrinological disorder
that masculinizes little girls,

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

little boys'.

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

rhesus monkeys and vervet monkeys,

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

So that puts a bit of a damper on the idea

that we are just empty minds
who are subsequently sociallized.

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

that's because of the beauty of my wife

who is here in the room.

(Applause)

That's a belated Valentine's gift.

(Laughter)

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

To give you a sense of how powerful
evolutionary psychology is

in understanding even daily events,

I'll just share one example
continuing with the story

of my little daughter.

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

of course we got the requisite
two-month ultrasound,

we put it up very proudly

on the refrigerator,

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

and she looks at these images,

now, these images I should point out,

they could be those of a lizard,

they could be those of an ameoba,

they could be those of an alien,

yet she looks at it

and arrestingly says,

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

(Laughter)

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

Now, why would that be related
to evolutionary psychology?

Well, it turns out
that when children are born,

around the world, right?

So this is not specific
to Peruvian culture

or Israeli culture,

it's very much a human universal,

when kids are born,

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

that the newborn baby
looks exactly like the father.

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

it's a cultural mechanism
to try to assuage

threats of paternity uncertainty.

But in this case,
this is the first scientific case

where this mechanism happened in utero.

So I've already made my daughter famous

even before she could speak or think.

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

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

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

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

that is most closely linked
to our survival.

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

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

in order to be able to survive.

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

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

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

cater to the same instinct
of hoarding and gorging.

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

with these dreadful diseases.

Continuing with the same line of thinking,

we have this incredible
innate preference for fatty foods,

few of us prefer raw broccoli
to chocolate mousse,

or to a juicy steak.

So, if you look here at the grizzly bears,

they're eating fatty salmon,

you know, prior to going into
semi hibernation.

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

they have one thing in common,

they deliver fatty foods to us,
that is tasty.

It's not that they have
good advertisements,

it's not that they have nice jingles.

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

with our evolved taste buds.

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

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

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

Great, sign me up, right?

Interestingly, though,
cross-cultural differences

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

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

so look at the top smoked meat sandwich,

or predominantly vegetable-based,

or how much spices are used
in a culinary tradition,

how much salt consumption is used,

how much pickling happens in a culture,

each of these culinary traditions
turn out to be adaptations

to the local environment.

And what's specifically,

it's correlated to the latitude
of the country,

which is of course correlated
to the ambient temperature,

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

So rather than simply saying
that here we have an example

of oh, it's due to culture,

an evolutionary approach
allows you to understand

what is the ultimate explanation
for that cultural difference.

Moving on to mating,
something that I think everybody here

would be interested in.

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

nuptial gift-giving.

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

has a food morsel in his mouth,

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

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

how about you grant me
sexual access to you?"

And, of course, we engage
in endless forms,

as consumers, in exactly this behavior.

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

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

and the true suitor.

Therefore, I have to pay 25%

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

And hopefully then, you will give it up,

just like the female cardinal.

(Laughter)

We use products as sexual signals, right?

So if you look at the peacock over here,

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

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

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

Because my phenotypic quality
is so great."

Well, I've argued in several of my books

that consumers do exactly that.

Many times, we use products
either men or women,

to improve our position
in the mating market.

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

John Vongas,
we decided to test this idea.

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

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

they actually drove a Porsche.

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

in one of two environments,
either in downtown Montreal,

where everybody could see you,

or in a semi-deserted highway.

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

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

for your own personal sinister pursuits.

(Laughter)

Now, what were some
of the dependent measures?

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

we collected salivary assays,
which then help us measure

their fluctuations
in their testosterone levels.

And what do you think happened?

When you put young males in the Porsche

the endocrinology response is outlandish!

(Laughter)

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

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

when everybody could see you.

So in downtown Montreal
it would go up a lot more

than on a semi-deserted highway.

The guys couldn't give a damn.

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

Just to continue with this point,

cars are sexual signals,

this is a study that was done
two years ago

by some British psychologists.

These are the actual stimuli
that they used.

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

beaten up old car, or in a Bentley,

and you ask women to rate
this guy in terms

of how physically attractive he is.

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

how beautiful is this man?

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

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

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

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

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

OK?

So again, it shows you how these products

are quite intoxicating,

in terms of how it helps us
position ourselves

in the mating market.

Of course, not only men
engage in sexual signaling.

The ladies are also guilty
of such pursuits.

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

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

I think I could speak safely
for all men here,

that we would not want our human females

to be conspicuously displaying
their genitalia in this way.

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

is that they would dress
much more provocatively

when they are maximally fertile

in their menstrual cycle.

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

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

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

where we've looked
at how the menstrual cycle

affects women's behaviors as consumers.

One of which is how much do they engage

in beautification

as a function of whether they are

in the luteal phase
or in the fertile phase

of their menstrual cycle.

Continuing on
with this idea of sexual signaling.

A few years ago
I had an undergraduate student

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

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

I want to do anything!"

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

this is a male student -

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

you're going to surf porn sites

for the next one month."

(Laughter)

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

"Prof. Saad, I love you!"

(Laughter)

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

I wanted to test

what evolutionary psychologists
have talked about,

this idea of a preference
for the hourglass figure,

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

whether I could actually pick it out

by doing a content analysis
of how female escorts

advertise themselves on the Internet.

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

here are my measurements,
here is my weight,

here is my fee.

So, what I had this
very lucky male undergraduate student do

is just surf different sites,

he ended up gathering data
of more than 1,000 female escorts.

(Laughter)

Right, he was really assiduous
in his pursuit of science,

and it covered 48 different countries,

so nobody could say,

'Oh, but this a Western standard.'

'Oh, it's due to the Oprah effect.'

'It's due to Cosmopolitan magazine.'

We specifically chose cultures

that were extraordinarily disparate
in terms of the different metrics

that a culture might be defined on,

and it turns out that the average

waist-to-hip ratio is exactly in line

with what is expected
from an evolutionary perspective.

Men like a waist-to-hip ratio
that signals nubility and fertility.

So, continuing very briefly,
how do some of these sex differences

that I've been talking about

manifest themselves in other settings?

Well, if you were a paleontologist,

and you want to study
the evolution of a species,

you typically would have gone
through skeletal remains,

you might go through the fossil records,

and that would allow you
to reconstruct the phylogenetic

history of a species.

Well, of course, our minds
don't fossilize,

and so we have to find
some alternate fossil record.

And so, what I have argued
is that we can turn to cultural products

as our fossil records.

Because cultural products

are ultimately created by human minds.

And so we could do a content analysis

on these cultural products

to help us identify
some of the evolutionary forces

that would have led
to the evolution of the human mind.

So, romance novels
are almost exclusively read by women,

around the world,
whether you are from Peru,

or Egypt or Montreal,

it's read by women.

If you, for example,
look at the male archetype,

the male hero,

it's almost identical
across all romance novels.

He's never a short, hourglassed,
beta male who is afraid of his shadow.

He's larger than life, he's tall,

he's muscular, he's a neurosurgeon,

or a king or a prince.

That's because that particular product
caters to women's evolved fantasies.

On the other hand, hardcore pornography

doesn't exist because
there is a patriarchal conspiracy

to demean women, it exists because

it caters to a particular penchant in men.

And so, if you want to understand
some of these sex differences,

look at these cultural products
that are very successful,

and you will really understand
quite a bit, not only

about our commonalities
but also about our differences.

Next, since we've had
Nomadic Massive and Owen

talking about music,
this is particularly apropos,

If you look at songs,

they're a fantastic stimulus
for looking at some

of these sex differences.

So, the things that men and women
sing about,

are perfectly congruent

with universal mating preferences.

So, around the world
men tend to place a lot more

value on youth and physical beauty

in prospective mates,

and around the world
women place a lot more value

on social status of men.

Therefore, if you look
at the left-hand examples

all of these top songs:
Gwen Guthrie, Destiny's Child,

TLC and Marlena Shaw,

they're denigrating men
for having low social status.

'If you think you're going to get with me

and you don't have any money,

walk away, idiot,
i'm not interested in you.'

(Laughter)

There are no songs that say,
'Hey, Linda, you're not working

hard at school,
I won't have sex with you.'

(Laughter)

Right?

(Applause)

Thank you.

Thank you,
I feel like I'm a comic up here.

(Laughter)

And, of course, when men sing
about social status

they then show off.

'I've got the goods,

I've got the Aston Martin.'

There's a million
songs 'money in the bank',

I mean, literally,
there is at least ten different

Hip-Hop artists
that have the exact same title

'I've got money in the bank,

you want to get with me.'

Look at the right-hand corner,
the way that men and women

navigate in terms of their sexuality
in their song lyrics,

is drastically different.

So, Mickey Gilley,

who is a country music star
from the mid seventies,

had a song called:
'Don't the girls all get prettier

at closing time?'

In other words, the girl
that men are willing to sleep with

at eleven o'clock is very different
from the creature

that they are willing to satisfice with
at three in the morning.

You don't have too many songs
that say, 'Don't the guys

get more handsome at closing time?'

Precisely because the cost
of making a sub-optimal mating choice

looms much larger for women.

That's not due to socialization,

that's due to a basic biological reality
called Parental Investment Theory.

Same thing for physical attractiveness.

It's almost always the case,
and by the way,

it's not only true in English songs,

it's not Hip-Hop or English,
or soul songs, you could do Hindi songs

and Arabic songs, and you will find
the exact same phenomena.

So, in conclusion, exactly on time,

T. Dobzhansky was a famous evolutionary
geneticist who said that,

"Nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evolution."

Well, I would slightly tweak that,
and say,

Nothing in consumer behavior could ever
make sense without an understanding

of our evolutionary heritage.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)