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Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior

Geoffrey Miller (Goodreads Author)

3.84 · Rating details · 1,159 ratings · 137 reviews

A leading evolutionary psychologist probes the hidden instincts behind our working, shopping, and spending

Evolutionary psychology-the compelling science of human nature-has clarified the prehistoric origins of human behavior and influenced many fields ranging from economics to personal relationships. In Spent Geoffrey Miller applies this revolutionary science's principles ...more

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published May 14th 2009 by Viking Adult (first published 2009)

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Feb 08, 2012 Xing Chen rated it liked it

Miller pulls together an acutely relevant array of information from a range of fields (e.g. psychology, primate evolution, economics, marketing), distilling concepts to their essence in elegant prose in support of his arguments.

My favourite section: a description of correlations between risk of exposure to parasites from outgroups, vulnerability of the immune system, and tendency to be more or less open to contact with unfamiliar people and cultures.

Some points that pop out in his writing:
He r ...more

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Aug 15, 2018 Tristan rated it really liked it

"Conspicuous consumerism is neither natural nor inevitable, but just one possible mode of human trait display."

This was a great, multidisciplinary critique of modern consumerism.

Miller analyzes and criticizes our tendency to display our personality traits through consumption, rather than through face-to-face interaction. He argues that our efforts to impress others through education, work, and bling are often misguided, because as social animals we can quickly spot where these signals are redun "Conspicuous consumerism is neither natural nor inevitable, but just one possible mode of human trait display."

This was a great, multidisciplinary critique of modern consumerism.

Miller analyzes and criticizes our tendency to display our personality traits through consumption, rather than through face-to-face interaction. He argues that our efforts to impress others through education, work, and bling are often misguided, because as social animals we can quickly spot where these signals are redundant or misleading.

Miller's writing is equal parts mean, hilarious, and insightful—he combines insights from evolutionary psychology, classical economics, Marxism, and postmodernism which makes for a unique synthesis. If Karl Marx, Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, and Richard Dawkins had a baby, it might write a book like this one.

The book starts by explaining why consumerism is both good and bad, then goes into the need for an evolutionary lens when looking at consumerism and marketing. Miller spends much of the book exploring how consumption patterns relate to the Central Six personality traits (intelligence, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, stability/neuroticism). And he closes with some tips on how to create better social norms—and a plug for a consumption tax rather than our current income tax—that could help us escape today's rampant consumerism.

Some quotes:

"Consumerist capitalism produces almost everything that is distinctively exciting about modern life and almost everything that is appalling about it."

"Consumerism's dirty little secret is that we do a rather good job of assessing such traits through ordinary human conversation, such that the trait-displaying goods and services we work so hard to buy are largely redundant, and sometimes counterproductive. ... The whole edifice of consumer narcissism rests on the questionable premise that other people actually notice and care about the products that we buy and display."

"We already have everything we could possibly need to impress our fellow humans, yet every major human ideology conspires to make us forget this fact—because every ideology seeks power by convincing us that we need something beyond our naked bodies and minds to be socially acceptable and sexually attractive."

"Modern consumers are like children doing spin art: we pour our favorite colors all over a fast-spinning life-style, fling pigment in all directions, and hope that some will stick to observers long enough for them to notice our composition. ... We put too much of ourselves into our product facades, spinning too much mass to our outer edges where we hope it is both publicly visible and instantly lovable. One problem with this strategy is that it leaves too much blank space in the middle, so there's not much of ourselves left for lovers or friends to discover in the longer term. This could be called the centrifugal-soul effect: runaway consumerism leaves us feeling superficial and empty, because we project ourselves outward to observes too promiscuously and desperately."

"Face-to-face discussions of consumerism can often go more smoothly than confrontations about topics like racism, sexism, or homophobia. This is because when you point out that consumerism is a really inefficient way to advertise personal traits, you can praise someone's traits and tickle their vanity even as you're cluster bombing the central ideology around which they've organized their education, career, leisure, identity, status seeking, and mating strategy. As well-trained consumer narcissists, we are such insecure, praise-starved flattery sluts that a little social validation goes a long way. A friend or lover can imply that we have wasted our lives chasing consumerist dreamworlds and status mirages, as long as he or she reassures us that we still appear intelligent, attractive, and virtuous. (Don't forget to mention that, or people will cry.)" ...more

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Jun 24, 2011 Jay Kamaladasa rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

When you give a man a screwdriver, he thinks that all the world's problems can be fixed by screwing around. That's essentially what's happened to Geoffrey Miller.

Don't get me wrong. This is an excellent book, for the first half. It covers fitness indicators and how we're using consumerism as a modern way to express them. It covers psychology's current obsession with personality traits and how they fit neatly with our consumer behaviour. So far so good - I mean how rarely does scientific models ...more

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Dec 14, 2009 Judy Frabotta rated it liked it

Haven't finished this yet, but I love it. One of those books that when you're reading it, "explains everything." In this case, status seeking consumerism.
Take two: OK, I should have waited before reviewing. It's definitely an entertaining book that will hold your interest, but it gets more than a bit nutty as it progresses. I strongly agree with the central thesis: there are more effective was to signal our fitness (intelligence, agreeableness, conscientiousness, etc.) than by consuming mass pr ...more

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Nov 30, 2016 Aaron Arnold rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, economics, science, read-in-2016

This book hooked me from its name alone: not only is the pun on its subtitle of Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior exactly my sense of humor, those subjects are right up my alley. Miller's thesis is that much of modern conspicuous consumption is a waste, and not just in the environmental sense. In his view, much of what we buy as signaling and trait display devices are also a waste in evolutionary terms, because human beings are already extremely good at figuring out who they want to have sex ...more

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Dec 22, 2015 Jurij Fedorov rated it liked it

Weird book with great new ideas in it.

Pro:
The concept of "Central Six" is crucial to learn for any individual. Especially people who work closely with human beings and need to understand talent and behaviour. Intelligence and the Big Five personality traits is the alpha-omega in psychology and the basis for all scientific psychology. Miller does explain how these things are the things you have to look at to understand consumer behaviour, and he is correct. Personality and intelligence can predic Weird book with great new ideas in it.

Pro:
The concept of "Central Six" is crucial to learn for any individual. Especially people who work closely with human beings and need to understand talent and behaviour. Intelligence and the Big Five personality traits is the alpha-omega in psychology and the basis for all scientific psychology. Miller does explain how these things are the things you have to look at to understand consumer behaviour, and he is correct. Personality and intelligence can predict a lot of variation in behaviour in human beings. While the rest of human variation in behaviour seems to be unpredictable. And evolutionary psychology and its sexual behaviour theories can explain the universal traits in human beings that make up our spending behaviour overall. It all makes scientific sense and Miller is again on the forefront of psychology and economics!

Con:
While his book, The Mating Mind, is one of the best philosophy books ever written this book is not. I have a hard time understanding what this book is? Is it psychology, philosophy or a personal manifesto? In the end it is all 3 things combined. And as the points made in the book are not always referenced in the text itself I had a hard time understanding when a random idea was presented and when a well-known and accepted theory was presented. The science and studies explained were great, the philosophical ideas were hit and miss and some of them seemed to be just there to provoke the reader. A lot of the book was also written for people new to evolutionary psychology - so maybe laymen would enjoy it much more than me? For example, the first 70 pages were at a high school level and didn't really contain anything deep. The book also had a lot of examples about Miller and consumers buying expensive houses and cars, which I don't do either. It doesn't mean that I didn't take a lot of great things with me from this book. But I also found it... creepy, a creepy but intelligent manifesto from a rich man written for rich over-consuming laymen who want to sound smart. I would love to see Central Six used again in other books too - with references and study after study. ...more

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Feb 25, 2012 Deb rated it it was amazing

*Time well-spent *

_Spent_ offers a valuable opportunity to escape from consumerism craziness and get back in touch with our evolutionary roots. Geoffrey Miller does an amazing job in showing how consumer capitalism preys on our evolutionary drives for displaying fitness indicators and chasing fitness cues, but it ultimately results in our flaunting traits that are often redundant, misleading, useless, or counterproductive. Under the spell of runaway consumerism, we get distracted from the truth ...more

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Jun 19, 2009 Paul rated it it was ok

White cover with clever photo, single word title, copycat publishing. A frustrating combination of screed (deriding conspicuous consumption), analysis (we advertise our biological selves by buying what we buy), and business journalism (summarizing current marketing trends). Some chapters are well reasoned and organized, and at least one (Chapter 9) is quite entertaining. Geoffrey Miller writes well when he's on, and clearly knows the field of evolutionary biology. Overall, however, one gets the ...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Katja rated it liked it

Shelves: en, z-lib, non-fiction

There are a few aspects of the book which I found annoying: it is verbose, the author talks about himself far too often, he is not always fair to those who hold opinions different from his (although his mean jokes are funny most times). But in the end these downsides are not so important. Miller made his point and quite convincingly, too. As a result, I feel that I now know more about marketing and why it works. For example, all those glamorous Gucci/DG/Versace ads with contemptuous models lying ...more

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Jan 06, 2014 Austin Tunnell rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites

An incredibly thought provoking book. Written by an evolutionary psychologist, it is also highly controversial. Whether left-wing, write-wing, God-denying or God-fearing, you will find some parts, if not the whole thing, offensive (perhaps even heretical..to both liberals and conservatives). Yet, I highly recommend it as its evolutionary perspective on consumerism is probably vastly different than anything you have ever read or heard.

The basic idea is that runaway consumerism is simply a recent ...more

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Jan 02, 2011 diane rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Love this book - he has a bunch of great ideas and ties them all together well - a bit dry in parts, but stick with it and it's worth it at the end when he finishes with his thoughts on a consumption tax. LOVE IT! ...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Dave McClure rated it it was amazing

fascinating take on behavioral psychology, marketing, evolution, sexuality/procreation, how and why we buy things, and how theory of sexual selection factors into our thinking. (also see previous book "The Mating Mind" for much of the theory behind this lab work...) ...more

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Sep 15, 2011 Nicholas Karpuk rated it liked it

So apparently in the broad scheme of things most of what we're doing works towards getting laid.

Or at least provides the deep-seeded reason for it. I doubt most presidents, on their high-level thinking, do so in pursuit of getting a whole lot of ladies.

Geoffrey Miller's book makes plenty of interesting arguments from the evolutionary psychologist standpoint about how the human drive to display our traits gets filtered far too readily through conspicuous consumption. He makes plenty of interestin So apparently in the broad scheme of things most of what we're doing works towards getting laid.

Or at least provides the deep-seeded reason for it. I doubt most presidents, on their high-level thinking, do so in pursuit of getting a whole lot of ladies.

Geoffrey Miller's book makes plenty of interesting arguments from the evolutionary psychologist standpoint about how the human drive to display our traits gets filtered far too readily through conspicuous consumption. He makes plenty of interesting arguments about how advertising could be more effective if it harness the six traits that all human beings can be broken down into.

It's compelling stuff, though in practice I fear its use would turn advertising into even more of a manipulative nightmare than it already is.

The strangeness comes in the latter part of the book, where Miller tries to address how we can fix our culture of conspicuous consumption both on an individual level and a cultural level.

On an individual level his advice has a more sensible lean to it, with suggestions on how to purchase more intelligently and with greater responsibility, noting how trait displays can work better on a budget.

However, on the macro level his advice comes off as unrealistic or outright ridiculous. Suggesting a consumption tax based on the responsibility of the purchased good sounds nice in theory, but it would require a massive effort, which he admits, but he does not seem concerned about who would do the deciding, how often it would be revised, and seems not at all concerned about the interests who might corrupt this method. So many corporations with heavy interests in Washington would find a thousand ways to game that system.

His other suggestion I found to border on irresponsible. He suggests we remove most of the laws that prevent discrimination and provide equal housing prevent groups from forming living environments based around a specific culture. While it sounds nice in theory, in practice it would just mean anyone not favored by a society would have the worst options in where to live. It's one of those odd libertarian notions that doesn't account for the corrupt or the petty. It's like saying we don't need handicap accessibility laws because good stores would do it anyway. If that was true, they wouldn't have needed a law in the first place. When businesses didn't have to, they didn't.

Fun reading, but his bright future doesn't seem to acknowledge some ugly realities. ...more

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Mar 02, 2010 Starfire rated it liked it

Recommends it for: People interested in the fuzzy area between psychology, marketing and consumerism

I originally picked this up because I was going through a kick of reading books about different aspects sexuality - this book, however, is more about evolutionary psychology and consumerism (and to a lesser extent, marketing), than it is about sexuality.

Despite this, I kept reading it, because the author does have some interesting ideas, even if they're presented in a style I found myself needing to take in fairly small doses at a single reading session.

Basically, the field of Evolutionary Psych I originally picked this up because I was going through a kick of reading books about different aspects sexuality - this book, however, is more about evolutionary psychology and consumerism (and to a lesser extent, marketing), than it is about sexuality.

Despite this, I kept reading it, because the author does have some interesting ideas, even if they're presented in a style I found myself needing to take in fairly small doses at a single reading session.

Basically, the field of Evolutionary Psychology looks at psychology in terms of the evolutionary triggers that caused us to develop certain psychological traits (and yes, it's heavy on trait psychology). I don't find any of the actual individual premises particularly challenging at their roots, but I did find the intense cynicsm and constant snark and smugness with thich they were presented, especially when combined with the judgementality of pretty much anyone who didn't share the author's snide comments about what was and wasn't scientifically reasonable, a tad much in too large an amounts.

I also have a gut issue with psychological theories that claim to address every instance of absolutely everything that relates to behaviour or motivation; and can twist and colour any particular instance to fit underneath their umbrella. Perhaps it's just that I personally dislike the implication that I'm being told "You may think within yourself that you did X thing for Y reason, but I know better than you that you really did it because of Z, and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you can tell me is going to convince me to allow for the possibility that I might be wrong." Especially when it's stated with this level of smugness.

So did I find the book interesting? Absolutely, and it's given me some new ways of thinking about and understanding some of my own behaviours and motivations that make a lot of sense to me. Did I enjoy it though? I'd have to say "No" there. While the snark, smugness and snide digs were actually kind of fun (in an uncomfortable, "schadenfreude" way) in places, it really got too much very quickly, and I think the book would have been a much better read without it. Of course, that may just be a clash of personal styles, so if you enjoy schadenfreude, snideness and psychology, this may well be the book for you. ...more

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Sep 04, 2019 Thomas rated it it was amazing

Shelves: social-sciences, psychology

A truly astonishing book. Miller dives deep into our collective unconscious trigger mechanisms, our seemingly odd (human) behavioural quirks, to surface with a novel concept of interpreting what drives the present (not just American) consumer culture.
Importantly, he does so with empathy, humour, and irony - making this an entertaining as well as rewarding read. More importantly, where many books of this genre fall down (never mind their lack of deep or novel well researched insights) - while us ...more

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Feb 26, 2010 Gaetan T. Giannini rated it really liked it

Family, Friends, and Sex
If South Park had an evolutionary psychologist as a character it would be Geoffrey Miller, professor at the University of New Mexico, and author of Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior. Miller uses his irreverent writing style to explain global consumer culture through the application of the science of human nature. This is a particularly good book for marketers as it uses up-to-date science to explain why we, as humans, buy, and why we are often trapped by the al Family, Friends, and Sex
If South Park had an evolutionary psychologist as a character it would be Geoffrey Miller, professor at the University of New Mexico, and author of Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior. Miller uses his irreverent writing style to explain global consumer culture through the application of the science of human nature. This is a particularly good book for marketers as it uses up-to-date science to explain why we, as humans, buy, and why we are often trapped by the allure of consumerism. He bases his argument on the notion that our needs and wants are driven by a psychological (or perhaps biological) predisposition to behave in a manner that signals our physical and mental fitness, and thereby, increases our likelihood of finding mating opportunities and receiving social support from friends and family.
Marketers will find this approach satisfying as Miller points out that we have been relying on an outdated model for understanding what drives consumers to want and buy things-namely Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need. Spent’s model suggests that humans display conspicuous waste, conspicuous precision, and conspicuous reputation to signal mating and social fitness. (You’ll have to read the book for specifics.) Fitness indicators manifest themselves through general intelligence and five personality factors. (If you are familiar with the NEO Personality Inventory, you’ll recognize these factors.) When applied to market segmentation, message creation, and media selection, it is my belief that marketers will find this approach more profitable and more socially responsible than the conventional “marketing as a business process” method.
From a literary point of view, most will find this book an easy read. Miller’s writing is in the pop-intellectual style made fashionable by Gladwell, but the academician occasionally bleeds through. He offers a fair amount of social commentary which is often arguable, but always well thought out and provocative.

...more

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Aug 09, 2009 Daniel R. rated it it was ok

The author blends personal observation, conjecture, and actual research into a rambling narrative about consumerism. Between taking pot shots at other research and offering little evidence of why his perspective is preferred it was hard to appreciate many of the points trying to be made. The last fews chapters offer a more expansive view of how society might change its behavior, compared to other books about consumerism that I've read, but I found the material out of place and instead wished for ...more

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May 28, 2010 Allison rated it it was amazing

I really enjoyed this book. I am very interested in consumer behavior and human behavior in general, and this book detailed how and why we do things the way we do. I thought it was fascinating and learned a lot from his real life examples. I am actually going to read through the book again and take a few notes about things that really got my attention.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in human behavior and/or perspectives on life, living and culture.

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May 12, 2011 Cassandra rated it liked it

FINALLY.

I loathed the author more than I thought possible - unabashedly pretentious and arrogant - BUT, thought a lot of his ideas were interesting. I'm with him on reducing consumption, and the six personality traits he outlined keep coming up mentally as I interact with different people ("Oh, she's high openness" or "Asshole! Low agreeability!").

I'm miffed I didn't finish BEFORE book club; I would've had a lot more to say. ...more

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Sep 28, 2009 Mike rated it it was ok

A few good and interesting ideas lost in a murky sea of mediocre science writing.

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Oct 09, 2018 Mark Mulvey rated it it was amazing

A must read for anyone, not just marketers. It’s grounded in the Big Five personality traits (+ a sixth) and assesses consumer culture and human nature through the lens of costly signaling and mating drive. Insights are all over the place, I got tired of highlighting. Chapter 15 is essentially an “Advertising Antidote” and could even save you some $...

You can probably skip the last chapter (Ch. 17) which deals with a proposed shift from income to consumption tax.

//

Pg 21: “A deeper understanding ...more

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Oct 18, 2017 Mikedariano rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A good start for evolutionary consumerism. I had heard of ‘peacocking’ but Miller goes much deeper on this idea and others. He also provides four chapters of detailed analysis of how certain traits are displayed.
This book felt 20% too long, a thinned out version would be nice but good ideas are throughout. This was suggested by Tyler Cowen and Rory Sutherland.

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Jan 13, 2018 Willy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, favorites

A favorite among the books I've read in the last 2-3 years. Highly highly recommended.

My quoted passages from reading the book:

* On life now and then:

* "Consider the average Cro-Magnon a 30000 years ago. She's a healthy 30 year old Mother 3, living in a close-knit clan of family and friends. She works only 20 hours a week at an organic fruits and vegetables and flirting with guys who will give her free-range meat. She spends most of her gag gossiping with friends, breastfeeding her name is b ...more

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Jul 16, 2016 Richard Wu rated it really liked it

Shelves: nourishing-nonfictions

Geoffrey Miller knows what drives human behavior and he’s tired of your shit.

In this book he lays it out on the false reductionism of popular business / marketing / social psychology books while singing a paean to a more truthful biodeterminist reductionism based on the time-tested Big Five model of personality. The central thesis is that rampant consumerism is a byproduct of societal-level mismanagement of our finely-tuned evolutionary impulses. We’ve outsmarted ourselves.

For various reasons, Geoffrey Miller knows what drives human behavior and he’s tired of your shit.

In this book he lays it out on the false reductionism of popular business / marketing / social psychology books while singing a paean to a more truthful biodeterminist reductionism based on the time-tested Big Five model of personality. The central thesis is that rampant consumerism is a byproduct of societal-level mismanagement of our finely-tuned evolutionary impulses. We’ve outsmarted ourselves.

For various reasons, I’m a fan of figuring out an author’s ideological underpinnings. Geoffrey Miller, a trained researcher with a Stanford Ph.D., is an intellectual omnivore both in terms of content and medium – from econometrics to primatology, from academic journals to video games, from Steven Pinker to Jean Baudrillard… Miller holds curiosity as a virtue (he would call this high openness) and is able to draw data (statistical and anecdotal) across dissimilar fields to form theoretically sound conclusions.

If you find that interesting, get this book. If you’ve ever asked questions like:

- What do the products I buy say about me?
- Do the products I buy really say anything about me?
- What have I been led to think I want, versus: what do I really want?
- Is evolutionary psychology a conservative sham?
- What would Karl Marx have thought of The Sims?

This book is definitely for you.

The reason this gets four instead of five stars is that Miller’s at-times irreverent, at-times hilarious voice at times finds itself being those things at the wrong times. He has some clear ideological biases in terms of taste, culture, and lifestyle, and though he recognizes that other people differ from him – sometimes profoundly – he derides their preferences using adjectives with negative connotations and expects readers to be in line through all of it; Miller would do well to observe Miller’s Law (by a different G. Miller) in practice as well as theory. Which goes: “To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.”

Favorite quotes:

“Aspirants must act like obsessive brainiacs at work, and then switch personalities 180 degrees to act like sensual, eco-minded slackers at home… The commute becomes an existential transition zone between one false persona and its opposite.” [p.257]

“A bag of Smartfood popcorn, once opened, cannot be put aside by any normal human until it is fully consumed, so it provides an opportunity to display one’s intelligence in avoiding salt-induced hypertension by not opening the bag in the first place.” [p.203] ...more

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Apr 18, 2012 Angelo Karageorgos rated it it was amazing

One more excellent book from the author of "The Mating Mind"

Dr. Miller introduces the modern findings of Evolutionary Psychology to marketing and offers valuable insights to marketers.

Humans are wired to have narcisistic behaviors. That is to display indicators of their fitness (fertility, social status, health etc.) so that they can attract better mates and create useful social connections.

Modern marketing with the use of our natural narcisism has confused people, making them believe that acqu One more excellent book from the author of "The Mating Mind"

Dr. Miller introduces the modern findings of Evolutionary Psychology to marketing and offers valuable insights to marketers.

Humans are wired to have narcisistic behaviors. That is to display indicators of their fitness (fertility, social status, health etc.) so that they can attract better mates and create useful social connections.

Modern marketing with the use of our natural narcisism has confused people, making them believe that acquiring products that are connected with wealth, status, coolness etc will be enough to impress others that this is a part of their personality.

There exists a hidden element in marketing to express that but it doesn't do it straight. An advertisement that says "Audi TT, the car that you deserve" deep inside really says "Audi TT, the car that will make you look sexy and will increase the number of female neighbours that want to have sex with you. It will also make other men admire you for your high social status that you have in order to be able to purchase and use this car."
Or an advertisement of a red lipstick for women could actually say: "By wearing this lipstick you look much more sexier, fertile and young in the eyes of men so you have much better chances to attract alpha males"

This is how the average purchase is done in the subconscious level.

Actually the funny thing is that men don't even notice the brands that women use. So that kind of purchases matter more in the terms of female to female competition.

However, our factory (natural selection) has provided us already with all these fitness indicators making this whole connection of our personality with products fake. Even though our environment will be short term impressed by them, when they get to know us better and the dust goes down we are once again naked in their eyes. What is gonna matter to them is our true physical condition (and not our botox), how cooperative we are, how humorous we are etc.

If you think about the long term relationships that you have established with other people, you will see that what really matters in order to be continued is how you behave in disagreements, how healthy is our skin, how helpful you are and how happy they are when socializing with you. And not so much the brand of your perfume or if you are wearing calvin klein pyjamas. ...more

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Jan 02, 2010 Joe Robles rated it liked it

I liked the insights from Evolutionary Psychology that Miller uses to show us our consumer behavior and why that behavior exists. He is a bit too anti-consumerist though and sometimes his message gets lost because of it. Though I do have to agree that we don't really need most of the the things we buy. I like my flat-screen TV, but did I really NEED it. No, my old 27" tube television was fine, worked great. I just like my 36" flat panel, or do I? The premise of the book is that most of our consu ...more

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Mar 08, 2015 Alex MacMillan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: re-read

You are not what you buy. But what you buy does signal to others what you aspire to be. But what you are has been obvious to all, all along.

These three sentences summarizing Spent, when internalized, will transform your life's priorities and direction. Consumerism, the belief that buying stuff best bring happiness and meaning, is the overarching ideology of our time. We all are caught up in its pull on our resources and attention, but lack full awareness of consumerism's influence because the un ...more

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Mar 05, 2011 Lucas rated it really liked it

Great personality test:

Measuring your big five (openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability, and extraversion)

Use the following scale to answer each question below:
1 = disagree strongly
2 = disagree a little
3 = neither agree nor disagree
4 = agree a little
5 = agree strongly

Openness (subtract the score for the second statement from the score for the first statement):
I see myself as someone who has an active imagination.
I see myself as someone who has few artistic interests.

Cons ...more

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Feb 14, 2010 E rated it it was amazing

How evolutionary psychology applies to marketing

Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller examines modern consumer culture through a scientific lens. The result is thought-provoking, useful and often witty, but a bit uneven. Miller does of fine job of explaining evolutionary psychology and, especially, of showing how the endless purchases that define “consumerist capitalism” come from an unacknowledged need to demonstrate physical characteristics or personality traits to others. This section of ...more

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Jan 26, 2010 C rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

A fun look at modern consumer culture through the eyes of an evolutionary psychologist, Spent explores how hardwired status seeking and the Big 5 personality traits – openness, conscientiousness,agreeableness, stability & extroversion – as well as general intelligence influence consumer behavior.

From the social psychology of consumer narcissism to conspicuous consumption as fitness signaling, Geoffrey Miller analyzes how the goods and services we buy unconsciously advertise our biological poten ...more

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My list of 400+ recommended nonfiction books is here, organized by topics: https://www.primalpoly.com/recommende...

'Virtue Signaling' is my new ebook available now on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2O62gGJ

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Website: https://www.primalpoly.com/
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Geoffrey F. Miller, Associate ...more

Books by Geoffrey Miller

The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

Virtue Signaling: Essays on Darwinian Politics & Free Speech

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Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson Shares His Reading Recommendations

For more than a decade, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the world-renowned astrophysicist and host of the popular radio and Emmy-nominated...

Trivia About Spent: Sex, Evolu...

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Quotes from Spent: Sex, Evolu...

“You may think that tax policy sounds like the most boring topic in the world. That is precisely what most governments, corporations, and special interests would like you to think, because tax policy is where much of society and the economy gets shaped. It is also where well-informed citizens can achieve socioeconomic revolutions with astonishing speed and effectiveness—but only if they realize how much power they might wield in this domain. If citizens don’t understand taxes, they don’t understand how, when, and where their government expropriates money, time, and freedom from their lives. They also don’t understand how most governments bias consumption over savings, and bias some forms of consumption over other forms, thereby distorting the trait-display systems that people might otherwise favor.” — 8 likes

“The ad does not say “Buy this!”; it says, “Be assured that if you buy and display this product, others are being well trained to feel ugly and inferior in your presence, just as you feel ugly and inferior compared with this goddess.” — 6 likes

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