by Bruce Hood
As we saw in Chapter 2, all animals compete to survive. That competition also includes success at reproduction so that our genes are transferred to our offspring. Genes build the bodies and brains that control our actions that produce the next generation containing the very same genes. So, in addition to staying alive, we compete to reproduce. One way to succeed in reproduction is to fight off competitors, but that brings with it the risk of injury or death. An alternative strategy is to advertise how good we are to the other sex so that they choose us to mate with rather than our rivals.
Many animals evolved attributes that signal their suitability as potential mates. These signals include appendages such as colourful plumage and elaborate horns, or ostentatious behaviours such as bellowing calls or the intricate, delicate courtship constructions made by the pufferfish and bowerbird. These physical attributes and time-consuming behaviours come at a cost but must be worth it because natural selection would have disposed of such costly adaptations unless there was some benefit.
Costly signalling theory explains why these apparently wasteful attributes are reliable markers of other desirable qualities. Poster child for costly signalling is the male peacock, who has an elaborately coloured fantail that evolved to signal to peahens that its owner possesses the finest genes. The tail is such a ludicrous, ostentatious appendage that in 1860 Charles Darwin wrote, ‘The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail makes me sick.’ The reason for Darwin’s nausea was that the peacock tail is not optimized for survival. It weighs too much, requires a lot of energy to grow and maintain, and, like a large Victorian crinoline dress, is cumbersome and not streamlined for efficient movement. With all these disadvantages, how could the peacock’s tail ever have evolved?
Heavy displays of plumage are a conspicuous disadvantage in terms of the dangers and inconveniences they entail, but they signal genetic prowess. For example, the more eyespots on the peacock’s tail, the better its immune system.11 Peacocks that are ill may lose feathers and have poor plumage, which reflects in their less glorious tails.12 Larger tails are correlated with other genes that confer better survival adaptation in spite of the disadvantage bestowed by expensive displays.
Signalling also reduces the need for physical confrontation with potential rivals. In the same way that the first possession rule evolved as a means of avoiding conflict over territory, many males in the animal kingdom use signals to warn competitors just how fit they are. Posturing, roaring, charging, splashing waves or beating chests are all forms of behaviour intended to display the potential harm an opponent might suffer so as to deter others from actual physical contact.
Humans also respond to signals. We have physical features that potential mates find sexually attractive, such as symmetrical bodies and good skin. Some of us are better endowed with these features than others, which is why we call them beautiful – though, of course, there is considerable cultural variation and individual preference when it comes to what we find attractive. If you are not particularly gorgeous, then possessions can signal your success and potential suitability as a mate. If you were not born beautiful then ownership enables you to compensate by emulating the peacock’s tail. Designer clothes, an expensive watch, even a helicopter can increase approval by signalling success.
This biological explanation of conspicuous consumption as a way to impress potential mates is supported by a recent study of the effects of administering the sex hormone testosterone to men, who were then asked to rate different watches that varied in their status value.13 Across the animal kingdom, testosterone is associated with a range of male reproductive and social behaviours – especially those linked to status, such as competition. Adult males were asked to rate three identical watches that were described as either being of high quality, powerful excellence or status enhancing. Men who had previously been administered with an inert gel rated all three watches as equally desirable, whereas those who received a gel containing testosterone preferred the watch described as status enhancing. We attract mates and intimidate competitors through our possessions, which is why such conspicuous consumption is a form of social peacocking.
DRESS TO IMPRESS
The global luxury market is worth an estimated $1.2 trillion, with personal goods representing $285 billion of that amount.14 Branding is the visible identity of a product and a vital component of luxury goods. Having a simple logo on your chest can be surprisingly powerful. In one study, people who wore luxury brands (Tommy Hilfiger or Lacoste) were more likely to be considered for a job, were better at raising money from others, and were generally more effective at getting people to comply with their requests than people who wore clothes from the local thrift or charity store.15
Manufacturers vigorously defend brand identity by prosecuting rip-offs and fake merchandise. Customers equally value authenticity. Thalia Gjersoe and I tested this in a study of over eight hundred US and Indian adults, where we told participants to imagine a duplicating machine that could make exact copies of items such that they were indistinguishable from the originals.16 We then asked them to put a price on each. Adults from both cultures valued copies less than the originals, but the effect was more pronounced in the West. The same is true for luxury goods. People expect originals when they buy luxury and feel cheated if the item is not authentic even if it is effectively indistinguishable from the real thing.
To be an effective signal, luxury should also not be affordable to everyone. This is what makes luxury goods exclusive and embodies their appeal for those who buy them. They are signalling a string of privileges and opportunities that make them elite. We tally up all these signals when it comes to judging the pedigree of others. If you attend a good school – signalled by your college scarf – then chances are that you either come from a wealthy background (tick) or possess exceptional skills (tick). You will be exposed to other successful individuals that share these attributes and so increase your chances that you benefit from the same mechanisms through networking (tick and tick). Employers will value the same selection process and so hedge their bets, thus perpetuating a system geared to favour the successful (more ticks). To do otherwise would be fairer, but also riskier.
If you never had those opportunities or privileges, then you can invest in expensive purchases to deceptively signal that you are successful even though you did not go to the best schools. Or you could try faking it until you make it with knock-off copies, because the chances are that perceived success will generate opportunities for future success. Even those who should not need to fake their success still seem susceptible to signalling deception. According to the actor Charlie Sheen, Donald Trump gifted the actor a set of his own platinum and diamond cufflinks that he was wearing at an event dinner as a present for Sheen’s forthcoming wedding.17 Only months later did the actor discover that they were cheap counterfeits. Whether they were fakes or not, this spontaneous gifting was still a gesture which was intended to signal power. Sheen told this story on national television as evidence of the weak character of the future president, but aren’t we all guilty of succumbing to the allure of status symbols?
We are so easily impressed and make judgements based on superficial evidence, but sometimes luxury provides a psychological boost to confidence that improves our well-being. Wearing designer clothes can make us feel better about ourselves, which then becomes self-reinforcing. When we put on our luxury apparel we feel special and behave accordingly. Luxury goods light up the pleasure centres in our brain. If you think you are drinking expensive wine, not only does it taste better but the brain’s valuation system associated with the experience of pleasure shows greater activation, compared to drinking exactly the same wine when you believe it to be cheap.18 What’s important here is the belief – not the actual luxury. Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School, found that people who wore what they believed to be fake Chloé designer sunglasses (but were in fact genuine) felt like frauds and were more likely to cheat on tests.19 You may be able to fake until you make it
, but deep down, if we do, many of us feel like imposters.
Luxury ownership signals wealth, but – ironically – it is often the very wealthy who prefer to look cheap. Countersignalling is when you go out of your way to show that you do not need to go out of your way. It has become almost a point of honour in Silicon Valley not to wear expensive clothes or suits, but rather jeans and trainers, which signals that you are more interested in tech than status. This style has been undoubtedly influenced by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg with his ubiquitous hoodie and casual wear. Gino has shown that countersignalling by wearing atypical clothing leads to higher regard in the right context. In one study, she asked Milan shop assistants working in high-end designer stores to rate two shoppers, one in gym clothes and the other in a dress and fur.20 The assistants were far more likely than the general public to think the gym-clothes wearing shopper would spend more and be in a position to buy the most expensive items in the boutique. They had learned from experience how the rich often countersignal.
Countersignalling only works if one deliberately violates the norms as a sign of defiance and confidence. Studies have shown that professors who wear T-shirts and sport beards at prestigious universities are better respected by students than well-dressed, clean-shaven instructors, but the reverse is true if the university is not prestigious.21 Gino calls this countersignalling the ‘red sneaker’ effect, after she wore red trainers with her business suit to a seminar where the executives assumed she charged higher fees and had a larger client list. When the A-list actress Cybill Shepherd wore orange Reebok trainers to the 1985 Oscars she claimed it was for comfort, but she was also demonstrating the red sneaker effect. A lesser actress with lower status would have suffered in silence wearing high heels rather than signalling she thought she was so important that she could get away with wearing whatever she wanted to the prestigious gala.
One problem for manufacturers of luxury goods is that they want to sell as much of their products as possible, but if everyone has them they are no longer perceived as high-status and cult-worthy. During the early 2000s, the luxury British clothing company Burberry suffered a significant drop in UK sales when its trademark camel-check design became popular among ‘chavs’ – a pejorative term for a low-income social group obsessed with brand names, cheap jewellery and football. This chav association tarnished the brand value of Burberry, forcing the company to raise its prices in an effort to move upmarket.22
Another problem for luxury signalling is that it can be easily faked or temporarily acquired. You can rent luxury clothes and cars by the day to send out the right message. The conspicuous signalling value of a brand rises with price only up to a point, beyond which the truly wealthy would rather not be seen to be owning it. In an ironic twist on Veblen’s concept, a new phenomenon known as ‘inconspicuous consumption’ has emerged at the high end of the market to distinguish those who would prefer to pay more for quality goods that are less obvious. These elite products have switched to subtle branding, as in the case of Louis Vuitton, which removed the iconic ‘LV’ logo from its upmarket bags. The super-successful and rich do not need to compete with the masses and, as we shall see shortly, are more cautious about evoking public envy. That does not stop them enjoying the cachet of subtle signals that only the true elites can afford and decode, which is why more high-end brands do not have flashy logos, compared to more mainstream luxury brands that rely on mass sales.23
We signal not only our financial status, but also the virtues and personality traits we would like to portray to others. Charitable acts raise an interesting question about the motivation to help others. Cynics believe that acts of kindness and sacrifice are not necessarily benevolent but rather self-serving, used to indicate positive qualities by ‘virtue signalling’, or letting others know that we are good people. This phenomenon has been found in cultures across the world. Anthropologists Eric Smith and Rebecca Bliege Bird studied this type of generosity in the context of the Meriam turtle hunters of Northern Australia.24 The Meriam people fish for turtles either by collecting them or hunting them. Anyone can collect turtles from the beaches during the nesting season, but only the best warriors can hunt them in the open sea. Hunters rarely keep any of the turtle meat, however, but instead give it away to neighbours or during feasts. This is not reciprocal altruism like the blood donation of the vampire bats, where there is an expectation to receive meat in return at a later date, but rather an act to signal virtue and status. As the hunting is so skilful, this increases the value of the signalling and if a hunter is thought to be strategic in their generosity, this is frowned upon. The generosity must be considered unconditional even though everyone knows it is a signal to be seen to be generous, which in turn generates favourable opinions of the individual.
RELATIVITY MACHINES
Conspicuous consumption and signalling are both just ways of competing with others. We buy luxury goods to signal our status, but this creates the problem of luxury fever, where we spend increasing amounts of money to get ahead of others.25 This leads to a constant battle of one-upmanship because there is always someone wealthier than us. Even if there isn’t, we are so poor at making judgements because, as we saw in Chapter 2, when it comes to salaries we feel under-appreciated and think that our contemporaries are doing better. This competition could be considered constructive if we increase our own productivity to earn more and outperform our rivals, but if there are others who are always better off, and we are putting all our efforts into a competition we cannot win, then the danger is not only ultimate disappointment, but a failure to find happiness and enjoyment in the things we already possess.
We are focusing on the wrong priorities. Rather than the relentless pursuit of material possessions and wealth, we should take the time to reflect upon what we have. Consider these two individuals, ‘Tina’ and ‘Maggie’. Who are you most like? (You can always substitute ‘Tom’ for Tina and ‘Michael’ for Maggie if you are concerned about gender.)
Tina values her time more than her money. She is willing to sacrifice her money to have more time. For example, Tina would rather work fewer hours and make less money, than work more hours and make more money.
Maggie values her money more than her time. She is willing to sacrifice her time to have more money. For example, Maggie would rather work more hours and make more money, than work fewer hours and have more time.
In a study of over 4,500 adults, those who identified with Tina or Tom, saying that they valued time over money, reported that they were significantly happier than those who identified with Maggie or Michael.26 This is strange because, given the choice, people often say in surveys that they would prefer more money than time. Certainly, this fits with the trend for increased consumerism we have witnessed over the last century. We think we want more money, but if you actually interview workers during their daily commute they say they would prefer to have more time.27 Presumably, they resent the daily grind of commuting but justify it in terms of the financial rewards and belief in the greater happiness it will bring. We think more money will make us happier because we can buy more luxuries, but it is the luxury of time that we should be valuing.
Many of us set out in life to earn as much money as possible because we are convinced that this is the secret to happiness. Around 13,000 first-year students were interviewed in the 1970s and asked their reasons for attending college. The most common reason given was to make money, but those who rated themselves as more materialistic ended up being, on average, more dissatisfied with their lives twenty years later, with higher rates of mental illness. This was a correlational study, and those who ended up the wealthiest were not necessarily the most unhappy, but the expectation that financial success is the root to more happiness is common, but false.28
Why doesn’t wealth make us happier? Why do we fail to appreciate what we already have and strive for more? To understand this, we need to shift gear for a moment from the complexity of happiness to how the brain makes decisions at the most simple
level. We have to consider some basic principles of how we make judgements in life. One of those principles is relativity. Relativity is not only a fundamental physical law of time and space in the universe, as Einstein described, but it is also one of the most important organizing principles of life on Earth. Every creature operates using the principles of relative comparisons. Even the simplest building blocks of our brains are relativity machines.
The brain is a complicated processing system, breaking information down into patterns of electrical activity propagated across networks of brain cells that interpret the world and produce all the thoughts and behaviours we experience. Our brains enable our bodies to interact with the world in all its complexity through these networks of electrical activity. This information is processed by changes in the rate of firing of brain cells called neurons. If you listen to the electrical activity of an individual neuron transmitted through a speaker, it sounds a bit like a Geiger counter, ticking over with the occasional burst before rattling off like a machine gun when it receives incoming information that there is something new of interest to be considered.
In this way, information is processed and stored as patterns of distributed activity in the brain. These thresholds, however, can adapt over time and with repeated activity. If the same sets of signals keep coming in, the network eventually adapts its firing threshold. In other words, it learns. A neuronal network will then require a relatively greater level of activation for it to respond again. When we experience some event over and over, we get habituated or bored with it and so we have a natural preference for novelty, which generates renewed interest. It is because our brains get bored that we are motivated to seek all sorts of novel experiences, from simple sensations that stimulate neurons to the rich diversity of human activities – something as complicated as buying stuff. No matter what the experience is, we are always on the lookout for something new.