We're used to thinking that Lancôme lipsticks and red Ferraris are not mere products, but extravagant displays of our mating fitness. Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior (Viking, $26.95) says such luxuries just scratch the surface of our spendy narcissism; author and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller argues that nearly all our consumer behavior is as flaunting as the peacock's tail.
Miller, PhD '94, a professor at the University of New Mexico, outlines six hard-wired dimensions (move over, Myers-Briggs) that predict human behavior. General intelligence, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, stability and extraversion (GOCASE, for short) are the traits that win us mates (romantic or platonic). All the things we buy—MBAs or MP3s or M&Ms—consciously and unconsciously symbolize and display our individual levels of these qualities. Rampant capitalism and omnipresent marketing encourage us to show off our traits by constantly buying stuff: It's a frenzy of status seeking.
Spent, written to be a rollicking read as well as a treatise on costly signaling theory, is a book stuffed with provocation. The author, appalled by how consumerism sucks souls, undermines culture and despoils the planet, is quick to offer Modest Proposals that might solve the problems: forehead tattoos that proclaim one's desirability quotient, for example; or the imposition of staggering consumption taxes; or the end of multiculturalism as a social value. (Miller contends that when people live in communities with very cohesive social norms—ethnic enclaves, for example—they don't need to signal status with conspicuous consumption.) More realistic is his advice on how individuals could be snookered less often in a marketing-obsessed world: Don't be an early adopter of new technology; borrow, rent or buy used; make things yourself; cultivate "natural-living" pleasures. The hours we lay waste getting and spending, he suggests, "our happier ancestors" spent on activities such as enjoying a sunrise, rocking babies, constructing things, practicing skills, petting furry animals, making friends, learning from elders and seeking out the sublime.
