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The Consuming Instinct

By Gad Saad

‘The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography and Gift-Giving Reveal About Human Nature’

Are consumers born or made? Which consumer choices are shaped by environmental factors (e.g., culture) and which are manifestations of our common biological heritage? This is the fundamental question that I have been tackling for much of the past 15 years of my career, using evolutionary psychology (EP) as the theoretical framework.

I was first exposed to EP in 1990, as a first-year doctoral student at Cornell University. My professor at the time had assigned the class to read “Homicide,” a book by the evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and the late Margo Wilson. In it, the authors used EP to explain universal patterns of criminality. Across widely varied cultural settings, some crimes occur in extraordinarily similar manners and are triggered by the exact same set of reasons, suggesting that these might be a manifestation of our common human nature. Upon reading the book, my evolutionary epiphany had taken place. I had found my intellectual niche. I would dedicate my scientific career to identifying the evolutionary roots of our consuming instinct.

The Ferrari California convertible

Evolutionary psychology proposes that the human mind is the product of the dual evolutionary processes of natural selection as well as sexual selection. In other words, evolution is as relevant in explaining the evolution of the human mind as it is in elucidating how our opposable thumbs, eyes, and pancreas have evolved. Contrary to the predominant view in the social sciences, evolution does not stop at the head. Natural selection yields adaptations that confer a survival advantage (e.g., animal camouflage), while sexual selection results in adaptations that bestow a mating advantage (a peacock’s tail). I argue that many consumer choices are vestiges of these two forces of evolution. For example, the universal penchant for fatty foods is an adaptation to the recurring survival challenges of caloric scarcity and caloric uncertainty faced by our ancestors. It is not surprising then that the most popular restaurant chains around the world (McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, Subway, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Domino’s Pizza and Dunkin’ Donuts) share one common element: They all offer highly caloric and tasty foods that are congruent with our evolved taste buds.

Interestingly, many cross-cultural differences in culinary traditions are also due to biological forces (see the work of Paul Sherman and his colleagues on Darwinian gastronomy). How much spices are used in a given cuisine (e.g., Thai versus Swedish), the extent of pickling that occurs (e.g., Korean kimchi), and the prevalence of meat versus vegetable dishes, are all cultural adaptations driven by a desire to minimize exposure to food pathogens. Note how EP is relevant in explaining universally similar gustatory preferences (desire for highly caloric foods) as well as cross-cultural culinary differences (the extent of spice use).

In life’s struggle, the first step is to survive. The next is to attract a suitable mate. It is not surprising then that many products serve as sexual signals in the mating market. It is no coincidence that men constitute the great majority of luxury car collectors (despite the fact that innumerable wealthy women could afford to own such cars). The Aston Martin is the human male version of the peacock’s tail.

I recently conducted a study with one of my former graduate students (John Vongas) wherein we had young men drive one of two cars (an expensive Porsche or an old decrepit sedan) in one of two environments (downtown Montreal or on a semi-deserted highway). After each of the four drives, we collected salivary assays to determine how men’s testosterone levels might be affected by such conspicuous acts. As expected, putting a man behind the wheels of a Porsche yields a drastic rise in his testosterone levels. This endocrinological reaction has been documented across numerous species that establish dominance hierarchies. In a combat between rival males, the winner will see a rise in his testosterone levels while the loser will experience a corresponding drop in his. Driving a Porsche is akin to a social victory.

Relatedly, drivers behave very differently on the road depending on the status of the cars that they are driving. At an intersection, drivers are much more patient when behind a high-status car (in terms of how quickly they honk when the light turns green), and they are much more likely to honk if driving a high-status car. You truly own the road when behind the wheels of a Maserati. Beyond cars, countless other products possess a strong sex-specificity because they are rooted in biological-based sex differences (e.g., gambling, pornography, extreme sports, compulsive buying, cosmetics, plastic surgery).

Hormonal influences are not restricted to male consumers. My doctoral student Eric Stenstrom and I tracked women’s consumer preferences, desires, and purchases across 35 contiguous days to determine whether these are influenced by their menstrual cycles. Specifically, we were interested in women’s beautification practices (mating) and food-related (survival) behaviors. As expected, the import of each of these two basal drives varies across a woman’s menstrual cycle. When in the fertile phase of their cycles, women are much more concerned with beautification, while when in the luteal phase (non-fertile) food assumes a more important role in their daily lives. These hormonal-based realities are equally operative for Japanese, Namibian or Bedouin women. On a related note, the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller and his colleagues have documented a correlation between the total tips garnered by female strippers and their menstrual cycle. When maximally fertile, the tips are larger. Female consumers as well as female service providers are greatly influenced by their fluctuating hormonal profiles.

CNN recently aired a series of reports on the “sissy boy” experiment wherein attempts were made to socialize effeminate young boys to engage in more stereotypically masculine behaviors. This is in line with the work of John Money, the Johns Hopkins psychologist, who was one of the staunchest proponents of the premise that socialization is the dominant force behind sex-typed behaviors. This is part and parcel of the blank-slate view of the human mind, which posits that we are born with empty minds that are subsequently socialized via a wide range of environmental agents (e.g., parents, peers, movies, song lyrics, music videos and so forth).

If this were true, then marketers should have the near-infinite ability to socialize consumers into endless new patterns of consumption. Perhaps boys could be taught to prefer to play with Barbie dolls and little girls might be socialized to seek toy trucks and G.I. Joe action figures. Perhaps men could learn to prefer “ positive” erotica to “ sexist” hard-core pornography. Perhaps a new generation of entrepreneurs could address the current dearth of male strip clubs targeting a female heterosexual clientele. Perhaps women could be taught that the onus is on them to woo prospective male suitors via gift-giving rituals. Finally, perhaps more men could be convinced to read Harlequin romance novels, while female readers might be taught to prefer a new archetype of the male hero in such novels: short-statured, pear-shaped, low-status unemployed men possessing high-pitched nasal voices.

These products will likely never exist because marketers are well aware that products that are incongruent with our universal and biological-based human nature will fail in the marketplace. I turn here to the Harvard evolutionist E. O. Wilson, who famously asserted: “The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool.”

Marketers might not know the evolutionary reasons that drive such commercial realities but they are well aware that consumers possess universal commonalities. Across cultures, when peddling beauty-related products, advertisers use endorsers who have highly symmetric faces. Around the world, online female escorts are advertised as possessing the universally preferred hourglass figure. Globally, religious narratives, cosmetic companies and self-help gurus offer solace and hope to assuage the exact same set of Darwinian-based insecurities (e.g., mortality, mating concerns, parental worries, status angst).


Dr. Saad is professor of marketing at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University, Montreal, and is the author of “The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature,” published June 21, as well as “The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption” (2007).

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    • Why did human beings create the pyramids? Why do we have baseball games?

      There are so many forms of human behavior that have nothing to do with "instinct" or our evolutionary past.

      Human beings are characterized by the tendency to attempt to transcend biological givens. People are willing to "die for their country."

      Of course, evolutionary psychologists will struggle to find some "real" (i. e., survival) basis to every known form of human behavior, even when these forms of behavior serve no survival value. This mode of explanation is called "tautology:" pretending to discover something when one already has decided what the answer is.

    • Isn't it the case however that what makes us human is precisely our ability to defy our genetics? The is/ought problem is instructive here: just because human beings are a certain way, or have been genetically pre-determined to be a certain way due to evolutionary advantage, doesn't mean they should be.

      We can still say that acquiring many expensive cars in a world with a billion people who don't have enough to eat is unethical, and an economic system that creates such disparities in wealth is unjust. Even though fatty and sweet foods were once evolutionary advantageous, in our modern context they neither aid health nor sexual fitness.

      I bet if those "sissy boys" were injected with anabolic steroids and subjected to a program of heavy weight training that some percentage would change their basic personalities. Note that anabolic steroid cycles are socialization, not genetics.

      While certainly our biological evolution carries a significant weight in our human psychology, it is far from determining what is right, let alone what is possible.

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