The Nature and Nurture of Consumption.” You’ll find it here: http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus

Recent article consider God’s willingness to intervene in sports contests and this one, on brand loyalty and unfair advertising laws, as applied to religions. Here’s one more: The importance of those on the maternal side of the family of assuring those on the paternal side that the baby looks like the father, even when there is http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/200812/does-this-fetus-look-like-me-absolutely-according-my-mother-in-law” rel=”nofollow”>no evidence of this.

For an overall description of what Saad is studying, consider this excerpt from his first post:

To tickle your curiosity, I list here typical issues that I am likely to discuss on this post. Why do men constitute the great majority of Ferrari owners? Why do women wear extraordinarily uncomfortable high heels, which often result in severe podiatric injuries? What do the most successful global restaurant chains have in common? How do consumers allocate their gift-giving budgets? Why is religion such a successful “product”? What do Arabic, Hindi, French, and American Hip Hop songs have in common? How does a woman’s menstrual cycle affect her consumption acts? Why was Seinfeld such a popular sitcom? Why are beautiful endorsers so frequently used in advertisements? Are successful telemarketers likely to possess particular types of voices? Why are pathological gamblers largely male whereas women constitute the majority of compulsive buyers? The answer to each of the latter questions (and countless others) rests on an understanding of our biological heritage.

I’d also point out that my post is not just directed to you and Grumpy. It was also directed to the many people who are not as familiar with the concepts of EP. For many of them (I would bet) it is a startling thought that there is a deep Darwinian framework for understanding gift-giving to be an abject investment in one’s self.

BTW, I don’t see the need to use a perjorative term like “Machiavellian” to describe social bonding in primates. That implies a win/lose situation rather than a win-win strategy to optimally regulate each other’s hormone levels. I’ll take a good hit of oxytocin any day!

Speaking of the Golden Rule, I certainly would not appreciate it someone dissed a book I liked w/o reading it, so I will try and locate a copy over the weekend to check it out.

Here are two podcasts of a recent talk Saad gave with regard to the contents of his book at Indiana University. I guarantee that the information provided in these lectures goes far beyond any deep understanding of “karma.” You will hear of an EP analysis of such disparate things as the enhanced testosterone levels of men who drive Porsches and an EP analysis of the “Master of My Domain” episode of Seinfeld.

[Be patient, these are entire lectures and the downloads will take 5 or 10 minutes]

http://informatics.iupui.edu/media/video/colloquia/536/536.mov

http://informatics.iupui.edu/feed/colloquia.xml

One way to perhaps better understand why Vicki mentions Karma is to think about the so-called Butterfly Effect in chaos theory: the idea that a butterfly’s wing flapping might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or to not appear). This is a metaphor for the chaos theory concept of “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” — the notion that small variations in the initial state of a non-linear dynamic system can lead to large variations in the long-term behavior of the system.

As Vicki explains, Karma isn’t just about the life of the *giver*, it also includes the lives of everyone else. When a giver gives a gift, even an anonymous gift, the life of the giver might (or might not) change but the life of the *recipient* definitely does change (i.e., probably improves). That person might then do something nice for other people, who in turn might do more nice things for still more people, and so on and so on. Using Erich’s above example, what if the anonymous $5,000 in that bag went to a food bank, and what if the food bank gave a hot meal to the gang members, and what if the well-fed gang members who were going to attack Erich the next day were happy about the free food so instead decided to play basketball, and what if one of the gang members were spotted by an NBA recruiter, and what if the gang member becomes an NBA star and donates millions of dollars back to his old neighborhood, and what if…well, you get the idea. When you do a good deed for someone else, even an anonymous good deed, you just never know what chain of events you have set into motion.

Similarly, the process can also work in a negative direction (so-called “bad Karma). For example, what if an evil, dishonest man decides to, say, illegally invade a foreign country: he sends in his Marines, they blow up someone’s house, which kills someone’s wife and children, so he volunteers to be a suicide bomber, he then blows up a Marine barracks, so the invader sends in *more* Marines as part of a “troop surge to stem the violence,” and they kill more innocent people, so then more people volunteer to be suicide bombers…well, you get the idea. Just as with good deeds, you never know what chain of events bad deeds will set into motion.

With these examples in mind, I think the point Vicki is making is that our lives form a dynamic, highly-interconnected, non-linear system. It is so complex that even Saad’s scientific method cannot understand, much less explain, its behavior; and, moreover, what it *can* explain has been self-evident since the dawn of human history: i.e., that people give gifts for selfish reasons (e.g., to form and strenghen coalitions) and we make our clothing choices to signal cohesion to a particular in-group. I think Vicki is saying, “Well, duh, Dr. Saad, tell us something we all don’t already know, because I think your research findings are self-evident.” I haven’t read Dr. Saad’s book, but I would agree: I don’t see what significant new insights Saad’s book offers. Anyone who has ever given a gift has consciously decided that the pros outweigh the cons, and anyone who has ever been a teenager knows full well the importance and meaning of clothing choices, so what does Saad’s research tell us that we don’t already know?

As I understand karma, it not tied to any proximate or ultimate scientific explanation. It is not tied to animal biology. Saad’s conception of gift-giving is biologically anchored in a framework that provides for predictions that can be proven or disproven. For example, the theory of reciprocal altruism is a viable strategy where there is an opportunity for repeated interactions withe the recipient, plus opportunities for keeping track of who has “honored or cheated on their reciprocal obligations.” (Saad, p. 117).

Evolutionary psychology also predicts that being nice to strangers is much more likely to occur where it is done before an audience of one’s friends and acquaintances. Sure enough, think of those many charity donations that are done in exchange for plaques and other public recognition.

Evolutionary psychology presents many theories that are testable.

Karma? It’s hard to test. It’s hard to know exactly what it even means. I could imagine many private acts of generosity that wouldn’t result in anything good at all to the do-gooder.  For instance, if I secretly entered a food pantry at night and left a bag with $5,000 would my life improve? Maybe someone would be nice to me in the future, but would that have any causal relation to my good deed? Maybe a gang would beat me up the next day. Is there any relation at all? Who really knows? How would you test this? Karma doesn’t distinguish between public displays of kindness versus private acts, yet there is a world of difference. I admit that I can see some overlap between Karma versus gift-giving to the extent that the do-gooding is public.

Karma is a useful concept–it amounts to an implied social contract, to many people.   It is akin to the golden rule.  Each of these concepts can serve to harness immediate “selfish” impulses and sublimate them to the greater good.  If the principle Karma wre followed in the aggregate, the world would be a more pleasant place, no doubt.

But Karma is not evolutionary psychology. I find that analyses and experiments like Saad’s add greatly to my understanding of human animals. Even if I were well-versed in Karma, I could learn a lot more about human animals by studying evolutionary psychology.

Maybe it’s Buddhist teaching finally rubbing off on me, but I’m not seeing the point of making distinctions between self-less and self-ish when the self is just a name we give to a node in a web of interconnected dependencies. Erika, why not just enjoy that we enjoy making other people smile?

Erich: certainly evolutionary theory has implications for personal and policy decisions, Often, though, the radical “new” insights are just leading us back to traditional ways. Child care is one example - most Americans think that it’s normal for a tiny baby to sleep alone in a crib and see no problem with the “cry it out” approach. picking up the crying baby will just reward the crying, right? But look at the baby as a primate infant, and you’ll see why he/she is screaming to be picked up - alone on the jungle floor or the savannah is no place for a primate baby. The baby has no way of knowing she’s safe in a crib in the nursery.
So be good primates: put your baby in a sling, co-sleep (with the baby in a sidecar crib if you’re worried about rollover) and nurse on demand. All traditional practices: it’s us modern folks who thought we were so much smarter than evolution.

In any case, there is no reason to quote scripture. Scripture merely codifies, and then claims credit for, long-standing animal…excuse me, *human*…behaviors. Even bats share their food with comrades, yet I suspect not one of them has ever read Ecclesiastes. If THEY discovered the benefits of gift giving all by themselves, then I imagine we apes did, too.