rss

Tag: "Geoffrey-Miller"

0
By Erich Vieth on September 06th, 2009

Intelligence as a display of healthy sperm

Psychologists found a strong correlation between high IQ and healthy sperm, as reported by the U.K. Telegraph:

The research, by the evolutionary psychologist Professor Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, centred around a study of 400 Vietnam War veterans who were put through extensive mental tests and were also asked to provide sperm samples. According to the test results, it was found that men who scored high on a battery of intelligence tests boasted high counts of healthy sperm. Whereas, low scorers tended to have fewer and more sickly sperm.

Miller points out that intelligence is sexually attractive to both sexes, and that intelligence co-evolved with sperm quality to advertise good genes.

Evolution • Human animals • Psychology Cognition
Full Story
4
Ubiquitous conspicuousity
By Erich Vieth on August 05th, 2009

Ubiquitous conspicuousity

At a park to weeks ago, a musician started singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I was talking with an acquaintance, who immediately pulled out his smart phone, clicked on a few buttons and brought up the movie “The Wizard of Oz” to play on his 1 ½” screen. He explained that he loved the movie and that he could watch it wherever he wanted. Impressive technology? Of course, but watching “The Wizard of Oz” (or any movie) is never such an important thing that I’d need to carry it in my pocket. Was my acquaintance really trying to tell me about his love of “The Wizard of Oz,” or was he subconsciously trying to communicate something else to me?

For many years we’ve been trying to convince ourselves that electronics manufacturers were right that we HAD to have their gadgets, including 50″ screen HD TVs. For decades, we’ve been convincing ourselves that electronic audio manufacturers were correct that we “needed” to plunk down $2,000 for high-end audio components with thick copper cables lest the sound degradation would piss us off too much to enjoy our music.

But here we are in an age where small is cool, and we’re somehow able to enjoy full length movies on tiny lo-res phone and iPod screens. And people are somehow surviving with small low-res youtube videos. And consider that the music almost everyone is enjoying on their mp3 players is sampled at a noticeably lower rate than CD-quality. And consider that CD quality sample rates are severely degraded compared to live music. But somehow we’re now OK with far less than perfect because small and convenient and high tech are cool.

I’m in the process of reading Geoffrey Miller’s riveting new book, Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior. We’ve all heard of conspicuous consumption (originally coined by Veblen). Miller refines and extends Veblen’s concept, setting out the differences between conspicuous waste, conspicuous precision and conspicuous reputation as signaling principles. Cars exemplifying these three principles would be the Hummer (waste), Lexus (precision) and BMW (reputation). Conspicuous precision “can be achieved only through time, attention, and diligence, while conspicuous reputation (brand names) reflects a “vulnerability to social sanctions.” Most products exhibit each of these three forms of “signal reliability.” Other signaling principles including conspicuous rarity (exotic pets or pink diamonds) and conspicuous antiquity (ancient coins).

I find it interesting how much we fool ourselves about how much we “need” products based on these qualities. We “needed” large high-quality electronic audio and visual players until it became a much more impressive display to have extremely small portable electronics. It turns out that our “need” for things isn’t ultimately about need for the product’s qualities. It’s about trying to impress others with our ability to differentiate and afford various types of products.

A few years ago, I was looking at stunning images of a coral reef on the big new HD TV sets at Costco. I asked my wife whether we should think about “moving up” to a HD TV set. She asked me: “How often have you been watching a movie on our 25-year old TV set when it occurred to you that you weren’t enjoying the show because the screen was not huge or high definition? I answered truthfully: never. We still have our quarter-century old TV set and I’ve never again been tempted to “move up.” But I also admit that if I were trying to impress people today, I wouldn’t be able to do it by showing off my TV. I wouldn’t be signaling that I can notice and afford fine engineering tolerances. I might show off my TV nonetheless, to signal my frugality, but my old TV wouldn’t be impressive to modern-day Americans, given that it is not (today) an expensive signal in any sense—I could buy a TV like mine very cheaply indeed at a garage sale.

Miller’s book is a powerful reminder that our “need” to buy SO many things is often not about the things themselves, but about the need to tell the world something about ourselves in order to increase our social status or to attract mates.

Miller has a lot to say about the differences among the types of conspicuosity. For instance, Aristocrats eschew conspicuous waste. They tend to hone in on conspicuous precision and reputation.

For more on Miller’s theory, see this book review at the NYT.

American Culture • Communication • Community • Consumerism • Cultural Evolution • Evolution • Featured • Human animals • Media • Networking • Psychology Cognition • Science • Technology
Full Story
19
Fat Tire’s first prize: an obsolete bike. The rationality of costly signaling.
By Erich Vieth on July 20th, 2009

Fat Tire’s first prize: an obsolete bike. The rationality of costly signaling.

Fat Tire Beer is holding a contest, and first prize is an old-fashioned bicycle. It is a cumbersome and heavy one-speed bike that lacks most of the useful features found on modern bicycles. What does it have going for it? Nothing much worth my while. I buy my bicycles for performance, features and functionality, not looks.

Others would say that the Fat Tire bicycle has an unique style worth coveting. I know a woman who recently paid a large amount of money for a “retro” bicycle much like the one in the photo. She bragged about her bicycle only in terms of what it looked like, and seemed to get irritated when I asked her whether she would miss some of the useful features found in most modern bicycles, features such as multiple gears, high-tech gear-shifting, feather-light frame, and front or rear suspension. It appears that Fat Tire Beer is looking for customers like the woman I just described, people who are obsessed with the looks of a bicycle rather than its functionality.

I recently posted on Geoffrey Miller’s terrific new book, Spent. At page 97, Miller discusses the “signaling value” of many modern products. Miller points out that modern corporations work hard to avoid competition based upon objective features that can be compared. Fat Tire Beer, for example, did not choose to offer a modern bicycle that could easily be compared to the many other bicycles currently being sold. Instead, the company chose to offer an old-fashioned bike that would signal a certain trait for the owner and his/her friends/acquaintances. Modern corporations

Use advertising to create signaling systems–psychological links between brands and the aspirational traits that consumers would like to display. Although these signaling links must be commonly understood by the consumer’s socially relevant peer group, they need not involve the actual product at all. The typical Vogue magazine ad shows just two things: a brand name and an attractive person . . . there is a hidden rationality at work–the rationality of costly signaling. What matters in most advertising is the learned association between the consumer’s aspirational traits and the company’s trademarked brand name–the fountainhead of all profitability.

Therefore, don’t waste your time trying to figure out what obsolete styles of bicycles have to do with beer. The bicycle featured on the label of Fat Tire Beer has nothing to do with the taste or quality of the liquid in the bottle. Rather, buying Fat Tire Beer is an opportunity for a consumer to display to others that the consumer can afford a premium beer. The bicycle on the label gives consumers a further opportunity to suggest that tradition is more important than functionality. Those who buy Fat Tire Beer let the beer do their talking for them: “I’m a person who values tradition over functionality.” That’s my guess.

I wouldn’t accept that cumbersome and sparsely-featured contest bicycle even if someone offered it to me for free, because I know less-costly, less wasteful and more effective ways of convincing others that I often value tradition. It involves hard work and no gimmicks. It requires that you willingly put your life under a microscope, that you repeatedly show rather than tell, and that you show your values in ways other than through conspicuous consumption.

American Culture • Communication • Consumerism • Current Events • Media • Psychology Cognition • Science • advertising
Full Story
0
Geoffrey Miller’s “Spent”: an evolutionary psychology romp through marketing and consumerism
By Erich Vieth on July 19th, 2009

Geoffrey Miller’s “Spent”: an evolutionary psychology romp through marketing and consumerism

I’ve repeatedly written about Geoffrey Miller based on the many provocative ideas presented in his earlier book, The Mating Mind. (e.g., see my earlier post, “Killer High Heels“). A gifted and entertaining writer, Miller is also an evolutionary psychologist. His forte is hauling his scientific theories out into the real world in order to persuade us that we didn’t really understand some of the things that seemed most familiar to us.

In his new book, Spent, Miller asks why we continuously buy all that stuff that we don’t really need? Miller’s answer is twofold. Yes, human animals have been physically and psychologically honed over the eons this to crave certain types of things over others to further their chances at survival and reproduction. That’s only half the answer, however. We must also consider “marketing,” which is

The most important invention of the past two millennia because it is the only revolution that has ever succeeded in bringing real economic power to the people. . . . it is the power to make our means of production transform the natural world into a playground for human passions.

Is the modern version of marketing a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is yes.

On the upside it promises a golden age in which social institutions and markets are systematically organized on the basis of strong purple research to maximize human happiness. What science did for perception, marketing promises to do for production: it tests intuition and insight against empirical fact area market research uses mostly the same empirical tools as experimental psychology, but with larger research budgets, better-defined questions, more representative samples of people, and more social impact.

Here is a July 2009 interview of Geoffrey Miller by Geraldyne Doogue of the Australian Broadcast Network:

Most of us are quite familiar with the downside of marketing. It encourages us to buy things we don’t really need. But marketing doesn’t merely clutter up our houses and garages; it corrupts our souls:

Consumerism • Culture • Economy • Evolution • Human animals • Meaning of Life • Psychology Cognition • Sex • ignorance
Full Story
0
By Erich Vieth on July 02nd, 2009

What we buy versus what makes us happy

Geoffrey Miller has just published a new book, Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior. I haven’t read it yet, but I am now ordering it, based on Miller’s terrific prior work (see here, for example).

In the meantime, I did enjoy this NYT blog review of Spent, which includes this provocative question:

List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.

If you’re looking for simplistic answers, you won’t get them from Miller. I won’t spoil the answers he obtained or his analysis of those answers, but you’ll find them here.

[addendum]

I found this one item refreshingly honest. Refreshingly, because I know a lot of parents, I see their faces, I hear their complaints (and their exhultations). I know that it’s PC to say that having children is a continuous wonderful joy and that all parents are glad they did had children. Miller’s research suggests that the answer is not this simple:

[Here's an answer that appears [much more on the ‘expensive’ than on the ‘happy’ lists [includes] Children, including child care, school fees, child support, fertility treatments. Costly, often disappointing, usually ungrateful. Yet, the whole point of life, from a Darwinian perspective. Parental instincts trump consumer pleasure-seeking.

American Culture • Consumerism • Economy • Evolution • Psychology Cognition • Sex • advertising
Full Story
0
By Erich Vieth on May 26th, 2009

Does evolution explain human nature?

“Does evolution explain human nature?” This is a typical Templeton Foundation question, in that it is laden with ambiguities. Only when one figures out the meaning of “evolution,” “explain,” and “human nature” can one really get to work.

I suspect that the Templeton questions are drafted vaguely in order to invite a wide range of participants, who must often roll up their sleeves to define the component elements of the question as part of their answer.

I don’t mean to sound like a pedant here. The reason I am posting on this question is that despite the wobbly question, Templeton has once again done a good job of assembling a wide range of opinion on an important set of issues. You can read the many responses here. My favorites are

Frans de Waal,

If we look at our species without letting ourselves be blinded by the technological advances of the last few millennia, we see a creature of flesh and blood with a brain that, albeit three times larger than that of a chimpanzee, does not contain any new parts. Our intellect may be superior, but we have no basic wants or needs that cannot also be observed in our close relatives . . .

Lynn Margulis

[R]eligion serves an obvious evolutionary function: it identifies, unifies, and preserves adherents. Admonitions to desist from the seven deadly sins inhibit behaviors that threaten group solidarity and survival. Greed, for example, privileges the individual in seasons of limited resources. Lust - the biblical coveting of the neighbor’s wife (in its male-centered perspective) - interferes with ideals for the nurture of healthy children and effective warriors. Prohibiting sloth enhances productive work intrinsic to survival and reproduction of the social unit. Anger, perhaps useful in battle, destroys family and other social relationships. Envy and pride promote individual interests above those of the larger social unit. The survival value of prohibiting sin seems obvious . . .

I disagree with neo-Darwinist zoologists who assert that the accumulation of random genetic mutations is the major source of evolutionary novelty. More important is symbiogenesis, the evolution of new species from the coming together of members of different species. Symbiogenesis is the behavioral, physiological, and genetic fusion of different kinds of being; it leads to the evolution of chimeric new ones.

Geoffrey Miller

My own research has been inspired mostly by good-genes sexual selection theory (the idea that animals choose their partners based on cues about genetic quality) and costly-signalling theory (the idea that only animals in good condition can afford seemingly pointless displays like extravagant plumage). These theories have proved enormously useful in understanding a range of human behaviors that have seemed to have no clear survival payoffs, like music, dance, art, humor, verbal creativity, conspicuous consumption, and altruism.

Robert Wright

What Darwinism tells us is how natural selection gave human life its distinctively rich texture of meaning. Darwinism can also give us guidance as we try to better ourselves and make that meaning richer still. What Darwinism does not tell us is why there is meaning at all.

David Sloan Wilson

Genes are only one mechanism of inheritance. Some immunological, psychological, and cultural processes also count as evolutionary. They too rely on the open-ended variation and selective retention of traits, but they are based on non-genetic inheritance mechanisms. People and cultures shaped by these fast-paced evolutionary processes no longer have the same “nature,” any more than two bacterial strains that have diverged by genetic evolution. In this fashion, my simple and seemingly boring formula can be understood to say that humanity as a whole does not have a single “nature.” Instead, each and every person and culture has its own “nature.”

There’s lots more to read (by these authors and others) at the above link

Cultural Evolution • Culture • Environment • Evolution • Science • nature
Full Story
56
By Erich Vieth on April 22nd, 2007

Killer High Heels

Today’s topic is high heeled shoes.  Why do women wear the damned things, I sometimes wonder.  Those women wobble around, they take longer to get from here to there, they often trip on small sidewalk imperfections, and they regularly fall and get hurt.
I will confess: my gut reaction is that a woman’s IQ relates inversely to [...]

American Culture • Consumerism • Evolution • Health • Human animals • Meaning of Life • Psychology Cognition • Sex
Full Story
17
Shopping for Sex: wasteful consumerism and Darwin’s theory of sexual selection
By Erich Vieth on February 05th, 2007

Shopping for Sex: wasteful consumerism and Darwin’s theory of sexual selection

A few weeks ago I ate dinner with friends.  One of the friends mentioned that, a few weeks earlier, he had attended a party in an upscale neighborhood.  At that party, one of the guests announced that she had brought her own bottle of wine because the host’s expensive wine wasn’t good enough.
From my end [...]

American Culture • Consumerism • Cultural Evolution • Culture • Economy • Evolution • Meaning of Life • Media • Psychology Cognition • Science • Sex
Full Story