The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think

by Kenrick, Douglas T.

  Why did a desire for status lead people to sacrifice luxury and go green? Were these budding go-getters somehow inspired to be altruistic and self-sacrificing for the environment? Not exactly. Instead, a second study found that a status motive led people to go green only if they could show off their green wares to others. If neighbors couldn’t easily see the sacrifices they were making to help the planet, such as forgoing the Corinthian leather seats and the powerful V6 HEMI for a sluggish one-hundred-horsepower hybrid, then it wasn’t worth it.

  The “going green to be seen” research suggests that the Prius phenomenon can sometimes be just a different version of conspicuous consumption. Driving a Prius is a very public form of conspicuous conservation. Michael Marsden, dean of St. Norbert College and an expert on automobile history, explains that the Prius represents classic car-buying behavior: “Automobile culture has always been about status. The whole industry is based on symbols. With the Prius, you’re bringing attention to yourself.” A Prius is essentially a mobile billboard conspicuously advertising the owners’ environmental concerns.

  Like putting up any advertisement, having your own portable billboard will cost you. The Prius costs about $5,000 to $7,000 more than a conventional, yet still highly fuel-efficient, car such as the Honda Civic—the one Consumer Reports calls a “Best Buy.” Does it make sense for people to fork up an extra seven grand merely to advertise their environmentalism? The answer appears to be yes, but only if the status subself is behind the wheel. Economists Steve and Alison Sexton have found that owning green products like the Prius increases people’s networking opportunities and produces more business connections. They estimate that in some especially green places, like Boulder, Colorado, this step up the social ladder is worth just about $7,000—justifying the price premium of a Toyota Prius over a Honda Civic.

  Recent reports indicate that Leonardo DiCaprio no longer drives a Prius. But don’t worry—he still really cares about the environment. We can tell because he has recently been seen in a new hybrid. DiCaprio was the first person on the planet to take delivery of the exclusive Fisker Karma, a $116,000 high-performance hybrid sports car that is sure to attract even more attention than the Prius. Spending over a hundred grand on a car must be really beneficial to the environment, because the second person on the list to receive the Fisker Karma is DiCaprio’s Academy Award companion Al Gore. Unfortunately, we suspect that both Al and Leo will soon need to find new cars. The Fisker Karma doesn’t seem bound for the Consumer Reports “Best Buy” list. When the consumer group bought a brand-new one and took it for a test drive, it broke down and could not be restarted. “We buy about 80 cars a year,” the bewildered folks at Consumer Reports explained, “and this is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process.”

  MULTIPLE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE SAME BEHAVIOR

  How would you guess Prius owners responded to the study suggesting a scientific link between a desire for status and green behavior? After the “going green to be seen” research was publicized in the press, Vlad was bombarded with scores of angry letters, phone calls, and e-mails from hybrid owners. Entire blogs and chat rooms were dedicated to arguing against the idea that green behavior is related to status seeking. These individuals had not purchased their hybrids to show off, they protested, but to help the environment. And darn it, they wanted to be sure that everyone knew about their purely unselfish motives!

  Were the hybrid owners lying to themselves about their motives for buying their energy-saving automobiles? Not completely. These people almost certainly spent a lot more time thinking about how their hybrids would help the environment than they did about showing off to their neighbors. But this brings us back to the central question: What motivates conspicuous consumption? Are Prius owners altruistically helping the environment, as they sincerely believe? Or are less conscious, selfish motives driving them to show off? It turns out that both explanations may be correct.

  At the heart of the debate is a critical issue we met earlier in the book: the distinction between proximate and ultimate motives for behavior. Recall that proximate explanations refer to the surface reasons for why we do things, whereas ultimate explanations refer to the deeper evolutionary reasons behind our behavior. This distinction is important, because if you ask people why they have behaved a certain way, they are likely to be in touch with the immediate proximate triggers (events in the environment and their thoughts and feelings about those events) but completely unaware of their deeper ultimate function.

  But to understand any behavior, we have to understand both its proximate and its ultimate causes. Think about what motivates people to buy Priuses. Do people buy them out of an altruistic motivation to help the environment, as most owners say? Or do they buy them to show off, as the “going green to be seen” research suggests? The answer depends on whether we’re talking about proximate or ultimate causes. The decision to buy a Prius can certainly be driven by altruistic motives at the conscious proximate level (“I want to be nice and help the environment”) and at the same time by subconscious selfish motives at the ultimate level (being nice and pro-environment enhances a person’s status). As demonstrated by the many Prius owners outraged by Vlad’s research, people needn’t have any awareness that their well-intentioned and environmentally friendly acts are actually selfish at a deeper level. Natural selection has already ensured that the desire to be helpful is associated with ultimate benefits.

  THE ULTIMATE DRIVING MACHINE

  Let’s park our hybrid cars for a while and return to the more general question of why people engage in conspicuous consumption. What ultimately inclines humans everywhere to fritter their resources on lavish commodities with no survival value, such as gold-plated Porsches or giant pyramids? As Thorstein Veblen himself observed over a century ago, conspicuous consumption is linked to status. But why? And why does showing off our status matter so much to us?

  The answer to these questions might be found by considering the role of conspicuous displays in other animal species. Let’s travel to the Australian Outback, to take a peek at the antics of the male satin bowerbird, which engages in a behavior that shares a striking resemblance to conspicuous consumption in humans. As we’ll see, the bowerbird’s antics may shed some light on the ultimate roots of the human inclination toward flashy spending.

  BOWER POWER

  The male satin bowerbird is a natural architect. He carefully constructs an elaborate grass structure called a bower. It takes him weeks and weeks of effort to build his towering grass castle, which can end up being several times taller than he is. The bowerbird pays special attention to aesthetics, making sure that his elaborate abode is precisely symmetrical and arranged just so. After he finishes construction, he embarks on a second phase of his architectural adventure: exquisitely decorating his mansion and its expansive front yard. He flies around searching for blue flower petals, blue berries, or even blue candy wrappers or clothespins, lugging them back to the bower and meticulously placing them in prominent positions (the color blue is scarce in his natural Outback environment, making shiny blue trinkets the bowerbird equivalent of rare jewels). Once his estate is ornately furbished, he begins standing guard, on the lookout for rivals, some of whom may be seeking to fleece his prized possessions.

  You might guess that bowerbirds build bowers because these nests will eventually function as their homes. But that’s not the case—the bowers aren’t nests at all. Instead, the bower’s only function is to attract mates. After spending months erecting and adorning his showpiece, the male patiently waits for females, who periodically drop by for an inspection. As females scrutinize the size, symmetry, and décor of his mini-mansion, the male performs an elaborate dance in the front yard, rhythmically flashing his lovely array of satin-sheened feathers, in hopes of persuading the female to stick around a little longer. If the female is impressed, the couple will copulate for a few seconds, after which the female flies back home to
raise any future offspring. And when the mating season is over, the male also returns to his old bachelor pad, completely deserting the bower that took months of work to build, only to start construction on another one from scratch the following year.

  The satin bowerbird is one of countless examples of conspicuous display in the animal kingdom. Looking across a wide array of species, we can make two generalizations about conspicuous displays. First, if you see a critter showing off its colorful plumage, dancing up a rhythmic spectacle, or belting out a melodious song, it’s a good bet that mating season is in full swing. These kinds of conspicuous displays increase specifically during the mating season. Sometimes the displays stop completely when the mating season is over, as when colorful birds trade their brilliant plumage for a duller, camouflage-friendly outfit and quiet their singing to the point where they become difficult to find in the trees. This seasonality tells us that the display is linked to mating.

  The second generalization we can make about those conspicuous displays is that if you see an animal showing off, it’s a good bet you’re looking at a male. Across a wide range of species, males do most of the boastful swaggering. The reason is that for most species, including humans, females enjoy a buyer’s market, and males have to sell themselves. As we will discuss more fully in Chapter 8 on sexual economics, this is because females produce the offspring, which requires a much more costly investment—whether it’s laying a large egg and sitting on it, avian style, or carrying a fetus inside her body and nursing it, mammalian style. Males in the animal kingdom often provide little more than a donation of sperm. Because one male can fertilize many females in the same season, but one female cannot carry offspring for multiple males at the same time, this makes individual males more expendable when it comes to reproduction.

  As a consequence, females across most species tend to be very choosy about which males will suffice as mates, especially if the fellows’ only contribution will be a droplet of DNA. And to be selected by a choosy female, males have to compete vigorously. Blokes need to pull out all the stops to impress even one lady, by singing the most awe-inspiring song, growing the most lustrous tail, or building the tallest and shiniest bower.

  Why do females choose showy males? Evolutionary biologists believe that conspicuous displays are signals that those males possess “good genes.” If a male has the time, energy, ability, and resourcefulness to build, decorate, and maintain a giant bower, for example, it indicates that he carries genes that have allowed him to thrive. By mixing her own genes with those of the most successful male around, the female passes those desirable traits on to her own offspring.

  FLASHING THE CASH

  Might conspicuous consumption in humans serve a similar evolutionary function as bowers in bowerbirds and flashy feathers in peacocks? If so, we’d expect to find two things. First, the tendency toward showy resource displays should increase with increased motivation to attract a mate—the prime directive of our mate-acquisition subself. And second, this motivation should be especially likely to produce conspicuous consumption in men but not in women.

  In an initial test of this idea, psychologist Jim Roney asked men to fill out a survey rating themselves on a series of traits. Some of the men answered the survey together with a group of other men working on the same questionnaire. Other guys filled out the survey in a room that included several attractive women. Roney found that men’s responses changed depending on the room in which they filled out the survey. In the room with women, men said they were more ambitious about their careers and rated attaining wealth as very important to them. Even though the women never talked to the men and could not even see what they wrote on their questionnaires, the mere presence of females apparently indicated to men that mating season was open.

  Our own research with Josh Tybur, Jill Sundie, Bob Cialdini, and Geoffrey Miller found that activating men’s mate-acquisition subself doesn’t simply lead men to value wealth in their hearts—it leads them to want to flaunt their wealth in public. We asked men and women how much money they would spend on things such as a car, a watch, a dinner, a mobile phone, and a vacation. For example: Do you want an inexpensive watch for $25 or one that cost $275, a $50 restaurant dinner or a $300 gourmet feast, a cut-rate $500 European junket or a luxury $3,000 vacation?

  Before asking them to make their spending decisions, we activated the mate-acquisition subself for half the participants. We had them write about going on their ideal date, describing in detail their fantasy partner’s looks and personality, as well as how they wanted their perfect evening to end. The other half of the subjects were in the control condition; they wrote about pleasant weather.

  When the mate-acquisition subself was off duty, men and women did not differ in their inclination to spend. They didn’t always want the cheapest products, but they weren’t inclined to overspend either. Waking people’s inner mate seeker, though, triggered an impulsive spending orgy—but only for men. With the flame of desire lit, men went into show-off mode, craving extravagant cars, flashier mobile phones, expensive vacations, and any other product they could display conspicuously.

  It’s not that men were consciously aware of a link between their purchasing decisions and their mating motives; they did not, in fact, have any reason to believe that women would see their flashy purchases. Instead, activating the mate-acquisition subself simply led men to want the expensive items. And with mating on their minds, they were more willing to shell out extra money to acquire those conspicuous goodies.

  Just as bowerbirds flaunt the blue in their bowers for potential mates, men appear to flaunt the green in their wallets to charm their dates. Does it work? It probably depends on the amount of green in the wallet and the choosiness of the date. Charming a woman used to hanging around with the Kennedys, for example, would probably require some serious display—maybe even an ultraopulent yacht longer than a football field with solid gold bathroom fixtures and barstools covered in whale penis foreskins. We don’t know what Jackie Kennedy thought about this eclectically extravagant décor, but we do know that she married Onassis—on his lavishly appointed private island.

  PEACOCKS, PORSCHES, AND PAPAS

  The fact that a desire to acquire a mate triggers men to flash the cash is consistent with findings that male animals are more likely to conspicuously display their feathers, antlers, or bowers when presented with mating opportunities. Men, it seems, are not always that different from peacocks. When a peahen comes strutting into the vicinity, peacocks instinctively fan out their magnificently grandiose tails. It doesn’t even need to be a real peahen—a picture of one will trigger the same show-off response. Men appear to do likewise. Merely sitting in a room with other women—or just thinking about a date—prompts the desire to spend conspicuously.

  But while it’s tempting to draw analogies between them, are all men really like peacocks? As discussed in the last chapter, human beings play more than one strategy, with some of us being fast and some being slow. Psychologists Jeffry Simpson and Steve Gangestad developed a personality test that can assess the extent to which a man is like a peacock—inclined to invest all his energies into colorful and flashy feathers while contributing little toward helping the female raise the young. In the language of life history theory, peacocks follow a fast strategy. And just as some humans follow a fast strategy, the researchers found that these men are indeed very much like peacocks. Simpson and Gangestad call these fast players “unrestricted” strategists. The unrestricted playboy types are interested in having a good time, with little or no desire to settle down or raise a family. And like peacocks, such men are more promiscuous. They are willing to have sex with women even when they’re not in love, and they think it’s a fine idea to have ongoing sexual relationships with more than one woman at a time.

  But not all men are like this. Simpson and Gangestad found that a substantial proportion of men find promiscuity unfulfilling and even downright unappealing. Unlike peacocks, some men are more “restricted”;
they want to find one long-term romantic partner, settle down, and raise a family. These men follow a slow life history strategy.

  Our colleague Jill Sundie suspected that conspicuous consumption would be found primarily among fast, peacock-like men. Working with Jill, Josh Tybur, Kathleen Vohs, and Dan Beal, we tested whether putting the mate-acquisition subself in charge would have a different effect on men who are like peacocks and those who aren’t.

  The findings couldn’t have been clearer: priming a desire to attract a mate produced conspicuous consumption only in the fast, peacock-like men. For the marrying kind of fellows following a slow strategy, on the other hand, the same mate-attraction motive did not trigger a desire to put themselves on display. If anything, these men didn’t want to draw attention to themselves by going over the top with flashy purchases (if these guys are going to spend big money, they want it to be inconspicuous). By contrast, the fast peacock types went straight for the most blaring products. They didn’t even care if the goods were genuine or counterfeit. As long as they looked expensive and attracted attention, these guys wanted to display them. In fact, the effects were strongest after the playboy-style guys thought about a romantic tryst with someone they’d never see again—a one-night stand. As soon as the women indicated they wanted a relationship, these guys started losing their inspiration to spend.

  This study shows that if you see a man cruising around in a shiny Porsche, gold plated or otherwise, he’s probably of the fast peacock variety. When a man drives a Porsche, Gad Saad and John Vongas find, he actually experiences a surge in testosterone—the hormone involved, across the animal kingdom, in male mating displays, as when a peacock spreads his tail or a bowerbird struts in front of his bower. It’s probably a good bet that the guy driving the Porsche is looking for a good time, not for a good wife.