Applying evolutionary psychology to human consumption.

Abstract

Gad Saad is an evolutionary behavioral scientist, professor of marketing at Concordia University, and a popular blogger for Psychology Today. For much of the past 15 years, Saad's research has focused on the applicability of evolutionary psychology to consumer behavior. He has previously authored The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (2007). As such, Saad is frequently teaching and writing on the application of evolutionary theory to topics and to audiences not traditionally receptive to this theoretical model‟s integration with their own. This process has great potential and several concurrent pitfalls. Saad is writing this current book, The Consuming Instinct, for multiple audiences. First, Saad is writing to consumers, as he claims that knowing the evolved foundations of our consumption patterns will be “liberating and empowering” (p. 33). Next, this book is designed to be a practical guide to marketers for using basic findings of evolutionary psychology (e.g. waist-to-hip ratio, a propensity to enjoy high-fat foods, the appeal of “dangerous” sports cars to risk-taking men) to sell products. It can be argued that whether or not marketers know why certain techniques work to sell products, they have long ago figured out quite accurately how to sell them. The last audience Saad is writing for, interestingly, is policy makers. He argues that consideration of evolutionary fundamentals of human psychology are oft-ignored by efforts to ban violent video games, censor offensive lyrics, and promote “healthy” body images. “Any framework that does not recognize the biological roots of maladaptive consumption will yield suboptimal intervention strategies” (p. 36). As the majority of readers are assumed to be inexpert in the evolutionary psychology model, Saad begins with the very basics (e.g., proximate vs. ultimate causation, domain specific mental algorithms, why sex feels good) and then provides rebuttals against nine anti-evolution claims (e.g., evolutionary theory conjures up “just so stories,” evolutionary theory promotes Social Darwinism) using the accepted logic of most contemporary evolutionists. Saad provides many examples throughout the book that act as a sort of primer on evolutionary psychology‟s findings of the past fifteen years or so. On “Darwinian gastronomy” Saad reviews the arguments regarding morning sickness as a defense