Evolution and Consumer Psychology

Abstract

The consumer realm offers a window into our evolved human nature. Many consumer choices, preferences, and behaviors are rooted in one of four key Darwinian clusters: (1) survival (e.g., gustatory penchant for highly caloric foods); (2) mating (e.g., employing products as sexual signals); (3) kin selection (e.g., the effects of genetic relatedness and genetic assuredness on gift giving); and (4) reciprocal altruism (gift‐giving rituals among nonkin). The evolutionary lens provides consumer researchers important benefits including the ability to identify novel research questions, and greater interdisciplinarity, methodological pluralism, theoretical parsimony, and consilience. Homo consumericus cannot be entirely understood without acknowledging the evolutionary forces that have forged our minds and bodies.

On the Method of Evolutionary Psychology and Its Applicability to Consumer Research

“…57-58;Saad 2011b, Table 1, p. 726). The infusion of evolutionary theorizing is increasingly taking place within the marketing discipline, as researchers aim to explore the evolutionary bases of consumer phenomena (Colarelli and Dettmann 2003;Durante et al 2014Durante et al , 2015Griskevicius and Kenrick 2013;Griskevicius et al 2009;Saad and Gill 2000;Saad and Vongas 2009;Saad 2006Saad , 2007Saad , 2008bSaad , 2011aSaad , 2013Saad , 2015. While specific hypotheses derived from evolutionary theory are tested using many of the standard data collection tools familiar to marketing researchers (e.g., lab and field experiments, surveys, ethnographic observations), the underlying evolutionary explanations are rooted in the unique epistemology of evolutionary psychology (i.e., the manner in which research questions are generated and subsequent knowledge is organized).…”

Addressing the sins of consumer psychology via the evolutionary lens

“…On a related note, epistemological dichotomania (Saad, 2015, 2020a) is another frequent bias that consumer researchers succumb to, namely the reflex to construe the landscape of viable phenomena through the prism of two factors (e.g., the Elaboration Likelihood Model's central vs. peripheral routes of persuasion; rational vs. emotional ad processing; promotion vs. prevention as regulatory focus). Notwithstanding the obvious need to simplify the world to study specific phenomena, behavioral phenomena do not always come in neat binary packages amenable to a 2 × 2 experimental design.…”

“…On a related note, epistemological dichotomania (Saad, 2015(Saad, , 2020a) is another frequent bias that consumer researchers succumb to, namely the reflex to construe the landscape of viable phenomena through the prism of two factors (e.g., the Elaboration Likelihood As is true of many newer scientific disciplines, marketing/consumer behavior suffers from epistemological insecurity. One of the ways that it assuages this disciplinary self-doubt is by hyperactivating the methodological and data analytic rigor of its published works.…”