The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - A Deep Dive Into Evolutionary Psychology (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 So the question I have is why do people consume what they consume and I want to start you off by

00:00:03.760 asking why would evolution program animals humans for consumption? Right so evolution does not

00:00:14.120 program for the modern consumatory behaviors that we see rather it programs certain behaviors that

00:00:22.500 would have been adaptive in our environment of you know our ancestors which now we see their

00:00:30.000 signatures in contemporary settings. So let me give you an example. So we know for example that

00:00:36.740 across many species when females of a species are sexually receptive and other species not humans

00:00:44.780 they will go into estrus meaning during that period they are open to mating and other periods they are

00:00:50.900 not. Well we know that females in those species will engage in certain signaling behaviors to say

00:00:58.260 hey I'm interested in potential mating. Well so then I take this principle and argue well we know that

00:01:06.500 of course humans are a high form of an animal could we see similar behaviors in human females and so I

00:01:14.020 have a study that I did many years ago with one of my former doctoral students where we looked at

00:01:18.640 how women will alter how they dress how they beautify themselves as a function of where they

00:01:26.360 are in their ovulatory cycle their menstrual cycle and so what we found as you would exactly expect from

00:01:33.000 an evolutionary perspective is when they are maximally fertile in their menstrual cycles this is when they

00:01:39.520 engage in the most amount of sexual signaling they're more likely to wear high heels they're more likely to

00:01:45.080 be more scantily clad in their dress they're more likely to put makeup on and so so it's not that

00:01:53.480 evolution has programmed women to wear lipstick it's that evolution has programmed women to engage in sexual

00:02:03.160 signaling as a function of where they are in their menstrual cycle which we then see a modern manifestation

00:02:09.240 of that behavior in contemporary settings so it's kind of like evolution programs you with a set of

00:02:14.820 toolkit to survive or maybe in some cases go a little bit beyond that and that toolkit gets represented

00:02:20.660 in modernity in the form of say consumption or wearing high heels so that's a manifestation of a baser

00:02:26.460 instinct perfectly stated that's exactly it the reason why I was interested in marrying evolutionary

00:02:32.920 psychology with consumer behavior because short of us breathing the the set of actions that we most engage in is

00:02:41.320 in consumer behavior right and it's not just consumer consuming coca-cola and starbucks and buying jeans we consume

00:02:49.100 friendships we consume religious narratives we consume literature so our existence is one that is consumatory and

00:02:57.380 since I was interested in evolutionary psychology I thought well that's great I will now take these

00:03:03.720 evolutionary principles and as you exactly said demonstrate their signatures in modern environments

00:03:10.180 very interesting that do you find that the word consuming friendship or consuming religion is appropriate or is it like

00:03:17.380 participating because I'm trying to understand is it the same base instinct or is there something else to it

00:03:22.280 yeah great yeah great question so it's not necessarily that we consume friendships but

00:03:29.640 as part of you and I maintaining a friendship there is a set of consumatory related behaviors that arise so let me

00:03:39.320 give you a specific example if you and I are very good friends it makes good sense for us to remember each

00:03:46.340 other's birthdays so that I will remember your birthday and when it's your birthday I will invite you out to

00:03:53.320 dinner with the expectation that when it's my birthday you will reciprocate and therefore that mechanism of

00:04:01.120 reciprocity is an evolved mechanism which in this case man itself manifests itself in our friendship ritual

00:04:09.480 and then in a consumatory sense in that we're inviting each other to restaurants or to buy gifts for each other

00:04:16.760 so it's in that sense that I say we're consuming friendships we also consume marriages in that for example

00:04:24.900 there is a slew of consumatory behaviors that happen related to the wedding ritual but even the process of

00:04:32.900 choosing a mate involves endless consumatory behaviors so for example the fact that in many cultures you buy

00:04:41.020 an engagement ring well it turns out that an engagement ring is laden with evolutionary based principles so for

00:04:48.880 example the younger the woman is the more beautiful the woman is the higher the likelihood of spending more

00:04:57.220 money on purchasing an engagement ring meaning that the mating market is literally a market right I come to

00:05:07.540 the mating market with a set of attributes that either increase my mating value or decrease it so does my

00:05:14.660 perspective mate and then there will be all sorts of economic exchanges that happen in recognition of that

00:05:21.360 and what drives those economic exchanges is rooted in evolution

00:05:25.240 um I it reminded me the mating market is a market anybody who disagrees is not on dating apps enough to

00:05:31.860 understand that and I once stated that as a matter of fact on a podcast about how the economics of dating

00:05:36.560 market operates I've studied Gatsad so I have some understanding of it and I eventually found people got

00:05:42.160 extremely unhappy about it to think of something so romantic as falling in love and getting married and

00:05:48.780 buying each other gifts as something that would lend itself to a market and consumption dynamic they

00:05:54.440 found it super offensive I'm sure you come across that you speak of things in somewhat logical cold

00:06:00.120 ways that otherwise people romanticize in fiction and poetry why do you think does that happen do you

00:06:04.980 have any speculation on that well what a beautiful question great truly great question what there are many

00:06:12.080 reasons why people abhor the applying of evolutionary principles to human behavior one of which you

00:06:19.140 exactly intimated in your question right I want to feel that there is something transcendental when I read

00:06:26.960 poetry or I read great literature or in the manner by which I fell in love with my wife with whom I've been

00:06:33.640 for 25 years the fact that I offer an evolutionary explanation for these phenomena in no

00:06:41.980 way reduces or diminishes the fact that they are transcendental right but they don't somehow happen

00:06:49.480 in an alternate universe that is decoupled from my biology right so yes my heart did beat differently

00:06:57.800 when I met my wife yes I had butterflies in my stomach that doesn't go away notwithstanding the fact that I

00:07:07.160 can offer an evolutionary explanation why I was likely to have fallen in love with her and vice

00:07:12.680 versa so let's give an example I'm not a tall guy we know that height is a beautiful thing and yet this

00:07:19.860 beautiful woman called my wife decided to to choose me well then I can ask myself well how could it be

00:07:26.760 that notwithstanding that I'm not six foot one I'm only the height of Lionel Messi I'm able to have been

00:07:33.280 historically successful with the ladies well it's because I've got other attributes that are desired

00:07:39.540 by women that hopefully compensate for the fact that I'm not a tall guy I'm a I have a good sense

00:07:45.360 of humor I've worked hard to achieve things in life I'm attentive and so I can compensate for not being

00:07:53.840 tall by by scoring very highly on other traits that are desired by women the fact that I just offered that

00:08:00.660 evolutionary explanation offers zero diminishing to the beauty of the romantic reality that I face with

00:08:08.700 my wife right so I can both eat gum I mean chew gum and walk at the same time I could appreciate the

00:08:15.780 romance of romance while also offering a scientific explanation for it yeah I feel like people don't

00:08:22.160 understand that reality is layered concepts together and on some layer on some level on some

00:08:26.820 conceptual layer it is logical on some level it's romantic and they can both coexist we can move

00:08:32.460 between these planes and that's the beauty of the human rational that's where I think it gets

00:08:36.320 interesting but you know with consumption one question that often comes up God is um why would

00:08:43.180 there be an instinct for over consumption and you know we are in the times where it's not so much

00:08:48.380 under consumption that hurts it's that the the poorest people in America are actually overweight not

00:08:54.240 underweight which is a unique fact of life right and so it it it lends itself to asking the question

00:08:59.640 why do people hold why do people over consume why is over consumption a problem yeah another great

00:09:04.580 question so in uh my earliest books so the first book was called the evolutionary basis of consumption

00:09:10.900 which is an academic scientific book and then in a subsequent book meant more for the general market

00:09:16.080 called the consuming instinct I exactly address that question I refer to these as dark side consumption

00:09:23.240 so for example pathological gambling is a form of dark side consumption uh pornographic addiction would

00:09:30.760 be that eating disorders is is the opposite you're not over consuming but you're under consuming and

00:09:36.820 that you're not eating right so why is it that if we are adaptive creatures we would engage in

00:09:43.440 maladaptive behaviors right shouldn't evolution have honed us to be these you know perfect uh machines

00:09:49.920 well adjusted to our environments well of course the answer is no in the following way each of these

00:09:56.880 manifestations of maladaptive consumer behavior originates with an adaptive process that goes haywire

00:10:05.440 right so let's draw an analogy regular cells divide and multiply cancer cells divide and multiply

00:10:16.680 the difference between the healthy cell and the cancerous cell is that the cancerous cell doesn't have a

00:10:23.480 stopping algorithm it it replicates endlessly so what began as a process that is an evolutionary

00:10:31.620 based process the division of cells becomes maladaptive when it becomes hyperactive and so now let's

00:10:39.600 apply it to a specific context in consumer behavior take for example compulsive buying which speaks to

00:10:46.520 your over consumption compulsive buying is a literal psychiatric dysfunction so it's not just i've got six

00:10:55.200 pairs of shoes it's it's when you typically will get a divorce you'll go into financial ruin because you are

00:11:03.640 over consuming but in this case compulsive buying is almost uniquely restricted to women so when you what if if as a

00:11:13.620 psychiatric disorder it's almost exclusively women who suffer from compulsive buying but now here's the

00:11:19.980 evolutionary insight it's not a domain general mechanism whereby they're just overspending on anything

00:11:27.060 right they're not compulsively hoarding lawnmowers they're not compulsively hoarding electronic cameras

00:11:34.580 they are compulsively hoarding beautification products so what started off as a perfectly adaptive mechanism

00:11:42.980 which is if i'm speaking as a woman now i'd like to beautify myself to make myself more attractive in the

00:11:49.220 mating market hyper fires so that now i can't stop purchasing stiletto high heels i can't stop

00:11:58.460 purchasing all of the various forms of beautification product pathological gambling is exactly the same

00:12:05.340 thing pathological gambling afflicts largely young men of low social status because all men seek to ascend the social

00:12:17.520 hierarchy some of us become famous soccer players others become bankers others become artists we're all using

00:12:24.580 different paths for the one same goal which is to ascend the social hierarchy because the number one most desired

00:12:31.740 trait by women in men is if they are of high status the the pathological gambler is simply applying a

00:12:40.380 maladaptive strategy for an otherwise adaptive process which is if i could only get the the the ball to hit black this

00:12:49.580 time around i could now make my three million dollars and then i could attract all the girls so all of these

00:12:55.760 various forms of over consumption are ultimately rooted in an adaptive process that misfires

00:13:03.160 um i'll offer something tricky okay and tell me tell me if i get this wrong too i was

00:13:09.540 i i had the chance to read a little bit of das kapital back in the day and it's a very interesting

00:13:15.420 um report on modern society in a way it leads into the communist manifesto and that's where it all goes

00:13:21.700 wrong but das kapital has a few interesting insights and one of them talks about how money becomes a

00:13:25.920 commodity for men very often where people gather money for money's sake not for consumption's sake

00:13:31.480 as if money itself is a commodity and we want to hold that and that i think is a predominantly male

00:13:35.980 phenomenon like men like their money in the bank women like that in their closets like one of the two

00:13:40.700 and so i wonder um i understand why women would like to buy those compulsive buying behaviors there is a

00:13:46.580 compulsive earning behavior in men parallelly or is that a false posit do you think that that happens

00:13:52.100 and why would that happen well it happens so the this the desire to seek status as a human universal in

00:14:00.680 men so you're exactly right the means by which men pursue that strategy greatly varies depending on the

00:14:09.460 cultural ecosystem so if i'm in the hadza tribe in africa i don't care about having a lot of money in the

00:14:16.420 bank account but the number of cattle head that i own will get me more beautiful girls in other

00:14:23.380 societies it might put one even in in the western societies why do women choose a starving artist he

00:14:31.620 doesn't have any money yet because they are banking on his future trajectory right no woman has ever said

00:14:38.880 i'd really like to be with a failed potential rock star who shows zero ambition zero

00:14:46.380 drive and zero talent but i am willing when i'm 22 to bet on the starving romantic uh future musician

00:14:55.240 because i think that he's got great talent and grit and he will be the next great rock star so the fact

00:15:02.520 that men hoard money is not because they are specifically drawn to the physical paper right but it's because

00:15:10.220 that is a honest signal of how i assort on the social hierarchy this is why by the way many people

00:15:20.020 in this case it could be both men and women seek very prestigious university degrees that otherwise have

00:15:28.480 zero economic value right i mean many many americans go to uh the ivy leagues by the way i'm an ivy leaguer i

00:15:36.360 have a me too me too so i get it i was an ivy leaguer yeah i went to columbia i went to columbia okay i'm

00:15:42.260 guessing because you couldn't get into cornell sure yeah that's the reason absolutely right

00:15:47.520 so i i did my ms and phd at cornell well there are of course i studied something useful that led me to

00:15:55.140 have a successful academic career but of course many people will go to cornell and columbia

00:16:00.100 and get a degree in underwater lesbian dance therapy uh but of course i can put that i'm an

00:16:07.940 ivy leaguer and that hopefully will impress the idiots within my social circle but i really have

00:16:12.860 zero uh you know ability to turn that degree into anything meaningful right so there are many ways by

00:16:20.460 which we can hoard things to achieve social status men do it with money because that's the currency that

00:16:27.380 is an honest signal of me having succeeded right so it seems like um one general principle of many

00:16:34.500 general principles because consumption is such a broad activity for women because men primarily want

00:16:39.980 beauty in women and that's an oversimplification there's a lot of research to that thanks to david

00:16:44.080 buss and then women want status in men so men consume to ascend on the status hierarchy and women

00:16:50.240 consume to ascend on the beauty hierarchy that's a broad enough principle that's perfect and i'm so

00:16:56.140 delighted that you just mentioned david buss number one he is a pioneer of evolution psychology number

00:17:01.040 two he's a very good friend of mine number three he wrote the foreword to my book the consuming

00:17:06.920 instinct so kudos to you for mentioning david he's amazing i yeah i had the privilege of meeting him and

00:17:12.720 recording with him like a month and a half ago at his residence in austin he's a great guy i read some

00:17:17.120 of his work too and it's as impressive meeting him in person imagine had i been as tall as him i would

00:17:23.080 have been emperor of the universe yeah he's pretty tall you are right you would be emperor with that

00:17:28.380 sense of humor and height going for you you'd be the you'd be the prince yeah um is there anything

00:17:34.660 else because look when i think of a consumption from a first principle point of view sure i consume

00:17:38.720 fruits food whatever etc because there is necessity and there is necessity for shelter and then there is

00:17:43.240 necessity for safety those are primarily they help me to live and survive and reproduce and then there is

00:17:49.320 status and then there is beauty is there something else that comes to your mind that generally people

00:17:53.520 lean into for consumption yeah beautiful question so i what i do originally in the in the evolutionary

00:18:00.340 basis of consumption is i argue that much of our purpose of behavior in general and in consumer

00:18:06.520 behavior in particular could be broken down using the following uh four categories within the taxonomy

00:18:14.600 so number one is survival number two and i'll give you examples of each in consumer behavior number two

00:18:21.940 is reproduction number three is skin selection and number four is reciprocal altruism those are sort of

00:18:30.920 four foundational darwinian modules that explain i mean pretty much everything uh so unlike say maslow's

00:18:40.140 hierarchy which by the way i i released yesterday a clip on my show where i was talking

00:18:44.520 about a recent biography i read on maslow maslow is fantastic but his hierarchy of needs was not

00:18:51.500 couched within an evolutionary framework it was more because he was a humanist psychologist he was arguing

00:18:58.660 that yes we could we could be stuck on physiological needs at the base level but really to truly be fulfilled

00:19:05.380 you have to aspire to the fifth level self-actualization which is perfectly fine it's true but it is not

00:19:12.580 rooted in the evolutionary framework so what i decided to do is say okay well i coming as an evolutionary

00:19:19.460 psychologist i would like to root all of our consumatory phenomena within an evolutionary

00:19:25.780 based framework so survival let's give an example of survival you and i and every single person in india

00:19:33.400 and any person who's ever existed on earth have evolved gustatory preferences taste buds that originate from the fact

00:19:42.380 that we come from an evolutionary environment where caloric scarcity and caloric uncertainty would have been endemic right

00:19:51.620 the the main the main the main challenge facing any species including the human one is first avoid becoming someone's dinner

00:20:01.800 get dinner and then reproduce that's it good night everybody right so survival one way by which it manifests itself

00:20:12.600 in is in food consumption so because you and i have evolved the gustatory preferences to prefer fatty foods

00:20:19.540 then i can pretty reliably predict that you and i probably prefer some fatty food over raw celery

00:20:28.740 now the individual differences between us might be that i prefer a fatty steak you prefer a chocolate mousse

00:20:36.380 but we both prefer some instantiation of fat over uh celeries raw celeries okay so so many many food consumption

00:20:46.660 phenomena would fit under the survival model let's do reproduction well we've already alluded to that

00:20:52.980 for example the fact that women engage in sexual signaling in the mating market using specific products

00:21:00.260 while men use other products to do so for example 99 percent of ferrari owners happen to be

00:21:07.860 drumroll men and it doesn't change across cultures it doesn't change across time periods

00:21:14.980 notwithstanding the fact that there are innumerable women who are millionaires and billionaires who could

00:21:20.940 certainly afford the ferrari yet they don't line up at the car dealership why because men couldn't give a damn

00:21:28.880 i could take a very unattractive woman who owns a ferrari versus a gorgeous drop dead woman who takes the bus

00:21:39.460 guess guess what 99.9 of men would prefer to mate with right now again that doesn't mean it's the only metric

00:21:47.180 it's most men don't only choose based on beauty but it certainly is a driver of my mate choice and yours

00:21:54.100 okay so so that would be survival survival and reproduction now let's come to the next two kin selection

00:22:00.780 and reciprocity now it turns out we see this in many species including humans that organisms are

00:22:10.680 willing to go to great lengths to even to sacrifice their lives for their kin right so why would i jump

00:22:18.460 into a river and to save my three children at the risk of me potentially dying if if if darwinian

00:22:26.600 selection operated at the organism level you should never see that behavior right because i only care

00:22:33.700 about my survival it makes absolutely no evolutionary sense for why i would engage in kin altruism to jump

00:22:41.180 and save my kids but jbs haldane who by the way spent some time in india haldane h-a-l-d-a-n-e was a

00:22:50.820 evolutionary geneticist he basically solved that conundrum which has then been explained further

00:22:57.760 by guys like bill hamilton hamilton who unfortunately passed away from a malaria infection

00:23:03.800 if you understand that evolution operates at the gene level and if you understand that each of my

00:23:12.640 children on average shares half of my genes with me therefore if i jump into the river and save this

00:23:19.500 packet of genes called three children well it makes perfect evolutionary sense for that behavior to

00:23:25.620 have evolved right and you see it in many many species where it's as if literally that calculus

00:23:31.680 is built into the organism's brain okay so that it's engaging in a cost-benefit analysis as to whether

00:23:39.280 to risk its life to save the packet of genes that are in the burrow okay or whatever or in the river

00:23:45.660 now how would that manifest itself in consumer behavior well gift giving patterns follow exactly

00:23:54.080 that calculus to a t okay so with one of my by the way i'm only dropping this because i'm i'm speaking

00:24:02.900 on an indian show my greatest doctoral student of all time is a gentleman by the name of tripad gill

00:24:10.800 who is a is a is a very close friend now uh and a gem of a human being well with him we published a

00:24:20.240 paper way back in 2003 where we looked at the manner by which people allocate their gift giving budgets

00:24:29.760 as a function of the genetic relatedness between them and the recipient and guess what it is perfectly

00:24:38.540 calibrated meaning let's put it in easier terms most people are much more likely to give a larger gift

00:24:45.980 to their sibling than to their second cousin right uh and and i mean the data is just it's lit it's

00:24:53.560 just perfect it's gorgeous okay so that would be so now i've i've given examples of consumer phenomena

00:24:59.480 in survival in reproduction in kin let's do the fourth one well okay we understand why i jump into the river

00:25:07.700 to save my three children why do i jump into the river to save you you're not biologically related

00:25:15.560 to me you could be a friend or even more paradoxical why would i ever jump into a river to save you if

00:25:22.900 you're a total stranger right that there are evolutionary explanations that might explain why

00:25:29.560 you and i if we're close friends we might engage in in these behaviors but why a total stranger

00:25:35.240 this is where the brilliance of robert trivers comes in who is one of the greatest evolutionary

00:25:41.500 biologists since darwin which is saying a lot well he is the gentleman who proposed the evolutionary

00:25:47.680 explanation for why reciprocal altruism evolves within human species and then i'll link it to

00:25:54.360 consumer behavior in a second but let's look at our primate cousins our primate cousins engage in a

00:26:01.700 behavior called reciprocal grooming what is reciprocal grooming well there i'm now some primate other than

00:26:10.080 human the humans are called hairless primates but we have a lot of primates who are have a lot of hair

00:26:16.080 when you have a lot of hair there are all sorts of ticks and parasites that come into your hair

00:26:20.920 i can't reach in the in my back to take out those annoying things how about i show you my back and you spend the

00:26:28.500 next half an hour taking away those sticks with the understanding that once we do it one way

00:26:34.700 i will reciprocate right so this reciprocal grooming builds bonds forges alliances uh there's even related

00:26:45.540 to hierarchy in terms of who grooms whom first and so the mechanism of reciprocity is built into social

00:26:53.560 species now why do humans do it there are several reasons but let's go back to our ancestral

00:26:59.760 environment when you and i are walking around in the african savannah or our ancestors remember earlier

00:27:06.320 i said we face caloric uncertainty and caloric scarcity which means that i might die of hunger and my family

00:27:13.100 might die of hunger if we bring down this three thousand pound game there is no refrigeration it's difficult

00:27:20.280 to to save all of it how about we engage in the following insurance policy i will share my spoils

00:27:27.680 with your family that is not biologically related to me on the understanding that in the future

00:27:35.280 you will reciprocate in kind by us engaging in this reciprocal arrangement we end up increasing our

00:27:42.620 chances of survival now by the way there's fantastic studies which i discuss in several of my books

00:27:48.440 that shows how this understanding of reciprocity has shaped our mind example if i show you a bunch

00:27:58.320 of photos of people okay you ready to get your mind blown i show you a bunch of photos of people

00:28:04.580 and i ask you to memorize their faces and the only thing i add to the face is whether this person

00:28:13.960 is a social cheater meaning that this person would violate norms of reciprocity or not but otherwise i keep

00:28:24.520 how physically attractive they are controlled like i do the proper experimental design guess what happens to

00:28:31.580 people's memories they're much more likely to remember the faces of social cheaters showing to you

00:28:40.280 that our memory system has evolved to solve specific evolutionary problems and therefore the reason why

00:28:48.160 i remember whether you're a social cheater or not and hence your face is because that has a clear survival

00:28:55.740 benefit to me in remembering that because if i know that when i give you a gift i can be assured that

00:29:04.360 you're going to be a parasite and never reciprocate this is valuable information for me to have from an

00:29:10.580 evolutionary perspective don't trust this asshole and so therefore i could then demonstrate that this

00:29:16.980 reciprocity darwinian mechanism manifests itself in many consumatory contexts including in the alignment of

00:29:27.820 our friendship if i invite you three times three years in a row for your birthday and you fail each of those

00:29:36.020 three times believe me i'm going to remember that were you showing these faces uh was the signal for

00:29:43.940 social cheating something like a fake smile where the eyes don't move but the lips do

00:29:47.900 no it isn't that although that it's that what you just said is also something i mean not exactly in

00:29:57.440 the way you framed it has also been studied by robert trivers i remember i just mentioned him earlier about

00:30:03.580 the theory of reciprocal altruism well robert trivers is also the gentleman who solved the conundrum

00:30:09.840 of why we engage in self-deception right so and and now you're going to see why it's related to your

00:30:17.660 story about uh some of these facial signatures when you and i are having a conversation there's an

00:30:25.040 evolutionary arms race because i would like to potentially manipulate you to my advantage and

00:30:33.100 you're carefully looking at my face listening to the intonation of my voice looking to see if there's

00:30:39.780 any shifting non-verbal cues that i'm exhibiting that suggests that i'm being duplicitous so there's an

00:30:46.160 evolutionary arms race between the two of us and i don't mean literally the two of us i mean in in

00:30:52.120 in the way evolution has shaped us now because for most people short of psychopaths if i engage

00:31:02.560 in duplicitous behaviors there are micro cues that i exhibit that shows that i'm lying

00:31:09.880 what better way if i want to protect myself from exhibiting those cues to you since you're very

00:31:18.480 much on the lookout for it if i self-deceive myself into believing the lie i'm about to share with you

00:31:26.780 then you could look all you want on my face you'll never see it so this is why so you could you could

00:31:33.060 begin to see why robert trivers was so brilliant although not an easy guy to have a communication

00:31:39.320 with i hate to say it because i've tried to have conversations with him and he's someone who

00:31:45.020 regrettably has suffered from some mental illness so astoundingly brilliant guy perhaps not the greatest

00:31:53.620 in terms of personal charms uh so this shows you how these types of cues might be things that we are

00:32:01.560 very much attuned to i recently did a clip to your question to your point on mamdani and and i'm going

00:32:09.180 to now do the mamdani the mamdani signature you see you see how you see how smiley i am well for anybody

00:32:20.100 who's a three-day-old pigeon you recognize that there is something astoundingly sinister in his smile

00:32:27.800 and the reason for that there is a scientific term for everything it's called the non-duchenne smile

00:32:34.760 duchenne was a neurologist who was actually trained by shakko who is the father of neurology and duchenne

00:32:43.980 demonstrated that when you are exhibiting a genuine smile versus a fake smile there's a different set of facial

00:32:53.580 muscles that are activated so when you engage in a non-duchenne smile it is very very easy to to see that it is a fake one

00:33:04.120 and so i hope i've answered your question yeah yeah you have uh but it begs the question because

00:33:09.620 if people are programmed so let me get this straight first of all there's a lot to unpack

00:33:13.680 so people engage in self-deception so that they can actually deceive other people so it's a means of

00:33:17.700 actually communicating the like without being recognized and i want to bring back mamdani i

00:33:23.440 have no personal affiliation no affection for mamdani it's just something that happens in the

00:33:27.060 distance that people talk about but it's an interesting phenomenon nonetheless and my personal

00:33:32.440 view on him um a little bit is that i've gone to college with guys like him i i know what this

00:33:38.500 champagne socialist types look like and i'm largely untrustworthy um but if you if that deceptive

00:33:45.960 smile is so obvious why did he win what what do you think happened there i know it's a little bit

00:33:51.320 of a detraction no no brilliant i'm gonna do a i'm gonna look for a a prop for a second hold on a

00:33:57.440 second you ready okay this is a memory stick this is a memory stick but for a second i'll ask you and

00:34:06.360 your audience to uh assume or pretend that it is the cork of a wine bottle uh one of the beauties of

00:34:16.400 being a multilingual speaker arabic is my mother tongue is that you come up you have sayings and

00:34:22.720 the other languages that are not as i'm sure is the case and they don't translate and they don't

00:34:29.000 exactly uh so there's an expression in arabic that says getting drunk by smelling the cork of the wine

00:34:37.280 bottle okay now what does that mean it means that you are of such weak constituency that you don't

00:34:43.260 even have to go through the hard work of actually drinking the the wine bottle you just take a whiff

00:34:48.560 and you're already drunk well but it also is used as a metaphor for someone who is weak-minded right

00:34:54.180 if i if i just uh tell you a few sweet words and you're already drunk by the cork of the wine bottle

00:35:01.800 then it's easy to deceive you so now here's the answer i think you you know where i'm going with

00:35:06.860 the answer to your question regrettably most people when it comes to choosing their political readers

00:35:14.360 don't activate their cognitive system but they activate their affective system and there's a there's a

00:35:22.500 persuasion theory called the elaboration likelihood model that speaks exactly to that point which by

00:35:28.640 the way is used a lot in psychology of advertising the the cognitive system is called the central route

00:35:35.280 to persuasion the affective system is called the peripheral route to persuasion now advertisers know

00:35:42.240 this very well without knowing all these fancy scientific terms if i'm trying to sell you a perfume

00:35:47.680 forgive me if i put you on the spot do you think that i'm going to activate your cognitive system

00:35:53.900 or your affective system in my system my affective system yeah right exactly so that so this is why it's a

00:36:01.500 hedonic product so therefore here's what i'm going to do i'm going to show you a girl on a horse

00:36:08.000 with her hair flowing there'll be no talking and then there's going to be some obnoxious brand name

00:36:14.180 mister right so i i what i have done is i have activated your peripheral system your affective system

00:36:21.540 i i don't usually sell you perfumes by telling you here is what eight harvard physiologists said is the

00:36:29.840 molecular structure benefits to your perfume that's triggering your cognitive system i don't want my

00:36:38.380 cognitive system when you're selling me perfume on the other hand if i'm telling you here are the

00:36:43.660 reasons why you should invest in my mutual fund then i should technically be triggering or invoking your

00:36:50.060 cognitive system so now let's link it back to mamdani and political choices when we are making

00:36:56.700 very consequential decisions about the people who are going to lead us i would hope to cross my fingers

00:37:04.300 that every person in the electorate is going to activate their cognitive system you're ready very few people

00:37:13.200 do why because thinking is hard thinking involves effort most people are cognitive misers as i like to remind

00:37:22.720 people they it's a lot less effortful to invoke my emotional system than it is to invoke my cognitive system so if

00:37:33.040 you have a politician who can say enough of the bullshit so that it could get us most of us drunk then good

00:37:44.160 enough for me so this is what explains how people vote and by the way i don't mean this as a political

00:37:51.000 partisan point but this is how people fall in love with the majesty of barack obama now it is true that

00:38:00.160 every single word that every single word that he utters is complete vacuous fatuous bullshit but my god does he say it with the cadence of

00:38:12.320 the southern baptist preacher right he's got this beautiful mellifluous voice let's look at

00:38:19.840 even someone much worse than barack obama our own recently departed prime minister justin trudeau he's tall

00:38:28.800 he's got beautiful hair he's young he's a feminist who really cares about women's plight so much so that he changes

00:38:39.100 he changes words like recovery he changes words like recovery he changes words like recession to

00:38:48.060 secession look i'm getting drunk i'm not sure i don't know if i could go on with this interview because

00:38:56.860 i'm already getting drunk just thinking about him i'm getting so turned on so therefore why does mamdani

00:39:03.180 win because most people are bafflingly imbecilic therefore if i do and i say everything is free

00:39:14.860 everything there'll be free food there'll be free transportation there'll be free anything you want

00:39:22.120 because tax the rich because the wealthy are exploiting you my god that sounds like a good message

00:39:30.120 i'd rather not spend my effort thinking about the accounting of how things could be free

00:39:36.780 and therefore you know what i'm voting for mamdani it literally is that simple you know um i i often told

00:39:45.560 my team early on i said uh the right psychological category between whether someone will do something

00:39:50.740 or not is not good or bad or right or wrong it's cognitive load and cognitive freedom people do not

00:39:56.020 want to be loaded cognitively and they want for it to be as simple cognitively as like that's the real

00:40:01.140 spectrum of action when it comes to pure understanding of the mind and i also think that

00:40:06.740 marketers understand intuitively something about psychology that psychologists do not for instance edward

00:40:13.740 bernese who's kind of a cross-pollination between marketing and psychology he convinced women

00:40:18.220 smoking was the most feminist thing ever it was a sign of freedom and all of us got duped by it he convinced

00:40:23.320 people that bacon and eggs are the great american breakfast and that led to heart disease and all

00:40:28.160 that and so is there something that these people who actually have skin in the game when it comes to

00:40:33.940 selling something when it comes to moving the human action needle uh do they know something more

00:40:39.360 than what psychologists do or is it different well if i can just correct you one bit although i understand

00:40:45.740 the gist of your question it's not psychologists versus marketing marketers are the ultimate

00:40:53.820 psychologists right i mean i did my my phd was at the johnson school of graduate management i mean my

00:41:00.820 my doctoral supervisor is a cognitive psychologist i was trained in psychology of decision making but the

00:41:06.960 fact that i apply it in consumer psychology doesn't suddenly make it not psychology right so

00:41:14.320 so so it so it's the marketer may not be a psychologist in that he didn't get a degree in

00:41:22.740 psychology but he is the ultimate psychologist because he is wedded to reality it pays or it doesn't pay

00:41:32.240 if i fully understand human psychology and i act accordingly this is why by the way usually

00:41:40.160 as i started my career in applying evolutionary psychology to consumer psychology when i would

00:41:46.300 give lectures in front of practitioners business leaders advertising executives they were like this

00:41:54.820 is gorgeous perfect when i would give the exact same talk in front of academic psychologists now some

00:42:02.120 of them said yes gorgeous perfect david buss but others said this is nonsense are you arguing that

00:42:08.980 human beings and consumers are animals yes idiot i'm exactly arguing that right consumers don't suddenly

00:42:16.900 cease to be biological beings when they are navigating the marketplace right so to your point the reason why

00:42:25.080 many psychologists are more likely to be detractors of my work is because they are wedded to

00:42:32.560 ideological principles that might be contrary to evolutionary psychology so for example if i believe that all

00:42:40.820 consumer behavior is due to socialization as an endless number of business scholars would think

00:42:48.940 well then i don't like god sad because god sad is saying no no of course socialization matters

00:42:54.680 but there is a set of underlying biological imperatives that holds true whether i'm in mumbai or chennai

00:43:02.840 or i am in nagasaki that's what makes us all universally the same well the academic psychologist may not like

00:43:10.960 that the practitioner goes yeah no kidding and so the reason why bernese was so good is yes because he

00:43:18.960 married psychological principles to in his case manipulate consumers no kidding right right so you'd

00:43:27.360 mentioned um survival you'd mentioned reproductive success you'd said kin altruism and reciprocal altruism

00:43:34.680 is the four sort of broad categories yes sir i have one more tell me if that fits somewhere and that's pure

00:43:40.000 mimesis pure mimetic desire my friend has that watch i want that watch everybody who's my colleague has this

00:43:45.460 car i want this car that kind of stuff and we end up like when i think of human consumption my sense would be

00:43:50.820 purely as an amateur that most people consume things that they consume largely because other people consume

00:43:56.240 those things whether that's tv shows whether that's music pop culture trends virality tiktok it's all probably

00:44:02.320 explained by mimesis is that a fair proposition yeah great question uh i can fit that phenomenon within the

00:44:09.540 four darwinian modules uh there are several ways to do it so let's let's let's begin

00:44:16.740 in terms of your social comparison because he did it i'm gonna do it well there is a phenomenon called

00:44:22.100 keeping up with the joneses right keeping up with the joneses is i live in on a street and this

00:44:29.140 asshole show-off neighbor of mine just bought a cooler car i don't like that because i want to be the top

00:44:36.660 dog in the neighborhood and therefore to your point i will engage in some form of

00:44:43.460 social comparison that then drives me right so that positional economy and the envy associated with

00:44:50.900 that positional economy can easily be fitted into one of those four darwinian modules so in the case of

00:44:58.180 keeping up with the joneses in terms of the car i i didn't say oh he got a really nice lawnmower

00:45:06.340 this is pissing me off therefore i better get a similar lawnmower because lawnmowers are not

00:45:13.060 publicly consumed they're privately consumed so that's not going to serve as a very powerful signal

00:45:19.380 to the world to the mating market of my value but if when that asshole buys the cooler car than me

00:45:26.260 that is emasculating me and therefore i might also go by so so yes you're the phenomenon that you

00:45:32.420 described is certainly an important one it's because we are a social comparative species

00:45:37.620 but it easily can be amalgamated within one of those four mulchers follow follow follow follow

00:45:43.860 got it got it got um there's one more interesting phenomena and that's kind of like um so i i am aware

00:45:50.260 of the idea of like the zahavian principle which is where i let's say if i'm fighting himanshu here i'll

00:45:55.940 tie my hand around my back to say i am you're worth one hand and that signals strength by proving a

00:46:00.820 handicap i signal strength but you know how rich people they want to signal they're broke so they'll

00:46:06.500 wear these hoodies these tech billionaires will be in their hoodies and flip-flops i've met quite a few

00:46:10.420 who don't even sometimes wear shoes and it's kind of interesting but the aspirational class will try

00:46:15.460 and get their rolexes and their petite phillips or whatever watches ap's they wear um and then the

00:46:21.300 intellectuals want to look pedestrian the pedestrians want to look intellectual and it seems like this

00:46:25.700 what is this concoctment like what is happening in society well first of all you you don't know the

00:46:31.300 amount of uh pleasure to my heart it brings me when i'm on a show and i hear the words zahavian

00:46:37.300 signaling so kudos to you sir uh of course i discuss zahavian sing uh signaling at length and in my work

00:46:46.980 let me give you the background to your audience before i answer it specifically to what you asked

00:46:52.260 so earlier we said life is a two-step process eat dinner avoid becoming someone's dinner and reproduce

00:47:01.860 there's no point of me surviving if i don't end up reproducing okay great so now darwin comes along and

00:47:08.820 in or on the origin of species he explains all natural selection which is channeled for survival but

00:47:17.460 then in a subsequent book a few years later he then says but what explains then the evolution of

00:47:24.740 the peacock's tail right because the peacock's tail could not have evolved because it confers greater

00:47:32.020 survival advantage to the peacock it actually does the exact opposite right it makes me more conspicuous

00:47:37.220 to predators it makes it more difficult for me to take flight and escape from predators so why could

00:47:43.140 such a tail evolve and why are the peahens choosing the males that have the biggest and most iridescently

00:47:51.940 colored and conspicuous tail well that's where then we get into sexual selection which says that it also

00:47:59.220 is important that i evolve traits that confer mating advantage a key feature of that is what's called

00:48:09.380 honest signaling or costly signaling or zahavian signaling which basically says that for a mating

00:48:17.940 signal to actually be discriminating for the females of that species i mean there are some species that

00:48:24.180 are sexual reversal but for most it works one way the males are impressing the females well if if the

00:48:32.660 trait is simply let's see who can do five push-ups and therefore the females will choose the one who does

00:48:41.220 it well it's not a very honest signal because most of us can meet that signal most of us can do five push-ups

00:48:48.340 on the other hand if the signal is as happens in some amazonian tribes put your hands in a

00:48:55.380 glove of leaves that are filled with really pissed off bullet ants where one bite from the bullet

00:49:03.940 and a single sting is as painful as getting shot hence it's called a bullet ant if i could put my hand in there

00:49:15.060 and the ants can now engage in multiple stings and i still am standing after that while the ladies will

00:49:25.060 go hmm that seems like a pretty tough guy right so zahavian signaling evolves precisely because it is an

00:49:33.700 honest signal of the phenotypic quality of that particular organism it's a very very powerful concept

00:49:40.740 which i then go on and use in consumer behavior so now i come to your question the reason why the ultra ultra

00:49:48.740 rich don't purchase maseratis but the nouveau riche purchase maseratis because when i'm a nouveau riche

00:49:59.060 entrant into that ecosystem having a maserati is an honest signal of my having arrived within that social

00:50:09.620 class but when i am elon musk who if i can engage in not to name drop is a

00:50:18.740 good friend of mine elon musk and the the ecosystem that he lives in the maserati is not a very honest

00:50:28.180 signal of because every single member of my ultra billionaire class could afford a maserati so i better

00:50:36.900 look for alternate ways to differentiate myself from those other lowly billionaires if i want to show that

00:50:44.020 i'm a serious billionaire then i'm going to find other ways to do it here is a way i can do it you

00:50:50.100 ready how about if i engage in and this is not elon musk now right this is this is from this is actually

00:50:58.260 i have a whole section of this in my 2007 book when i argue that art consumption is a form of zahavian

00:51:07.300 signaling that's exactly what i'm doing but it's not art consumption in that i'm purchasing a recently

00:51:14.260 discovered leonardo da vinci painting because that we might argue well at least there's a unique talent

00:51:21.540 that came with da vinci to be able to create such an aesthetically beautiful piece how about if i pay

00:51:27.380 150 million dollars for a painting that just has three lines on it which literally a monkey on crystal

00:51:40.340 meth could have produced now that's all of modern art thank you now i have really differentiated you

00:51:50.020 differentiated myself from all you other lowly bullshitter billionaires because if i could take 150 million

00:51:57.060 dollars and literally burn it by spending 150 million dollars on those three lines then boy i must be

00:52:06.020 the real deal to be able to to engage in in wasteful consumption and hence it's a costly signal so

00:52:12.580 therefore all of those things that you're talking about are a recognition of that dynamic i don't have to

00:52:19.060 wear fancy clothes when i'm elon musk because there is a million other ways by which i can

00:52:26.500 demonstrate the honest signaling of my status um isn't there something called poor signaling for

00:52:35.780 like you know the intellectuals who kind of wear clothes that look very pedestrian um is which

00:52:41.860 is the word used is it poor signaling or poverty signaling or something of that nature i i might be

00:52:47.700 forgetting yeah i don't know about the specific term you're thinking of but i can tell you the

00:52:53.940 following you ready it turns out that there has been a study and actually i've got a funny story about

00:53:00.020 this so uh it the higher your academic status at an academic conference the less lowly that you dress

00:53:11.860 right that's been tested and i remember that i was actually listening to a at a conference to that

00:53:23.620 research being presented and in my inimitable style i put up my hand and i said can you see how i'm

00:53:32.260 dressed in my bermudas i guess it supports your theory of course everybody laughed but that's exactly the

00:53:40.180 point which is now i can i can change it from sartorial garb to a slightly different thing i've noticed that when

00:53:48.260 i go to conferences or i give academic talks usually the truly top academics don't i mean it's not always

00:53:58.260 true there are some really obnoxious super high status academics but this typically the super high

00:54:06.180 high don't do this and they don't interrupt you and so on but the the ones in the middle that are

00:54:16.020 doing this not so much because they want to engage me but because they want to use it as a signal to

00:54:22.100 the big alpha dogs in the audience to impress them they're the ones who score very high on obnoxiousness

00:54:29.220 right so and i'll give you a great example that had happened i i believe david buss was one of the

00:54:36.740 so my first time that i ever presented at the top evolution conference it's called hbess hbess is for

00:54:44.980 human behavior and evolution society so all of the top evolutionary behavioral scientists are there

00:54:51.220 the who's who i this was my first time this is almost 25 years ago so i'm this young professor you know

00:54:59.700 not many people know who i am and i'm noticing in the back there is david buss there is john to be

00:55:07.140 lida cosmetes i know that many of the people in your audience may not know who they are there's martin

00:55:11.940 daly and margo wilson i mean that's probably the the five top pioneers actually i do remember david buss

00:55:18.580 was there uh the the five pioneers of evolution psychology which to me at the time would be from

00:55:24.260 an academic perspective like meeting you know leonel messi and zidane and soccer right and so at after i

00:55:31.380 gave my talk this was at ucl university college london in england uh they they ushered me over to to see

00:55:39.620 them and they were just the loveliest most humble folks super supportive oh this is great stuff it's

00:55:49.140 such a pleasure to meet you you're doing great work and i remember i left there my wife was with me and i

00:55:55.140 was like buzzing for three hours because you know you might think that these these folks given how

00:56:01.620 you know famous they are and so on they might beat up on me no but it's the next rung that act obnoxious

00:56:08.740 because they're signaling to others so there's definitely a lot of truth to what you said

00:56:13.700 interesting um i don't know if this concept came from reading something about you or from you

00:56:18.500 directly but it's in the same time as i was reading you and i found this super interesting and i know

00:56:22.900 people just do not understand this there is a specific kind of a woman that is used to advertise

00:56:28.260 to men and a specific kind of woman that is used to advertise to women right is that a is that

00:56:32.660 something that exists in theory yeah so that i mean i don't know if that's what you're what you're

00:56:37.700 alluding to but i i think it is in in sexual selection there are two mechanisms remember i

00:56:46.420 mentioned earlier natural selection and sexual selection sexual selection is the selection of

00:56:51.700 traits that confer a mating advantage now within sexual selection there is

00:56:58.340 is intrasexual competition and intersexual competition so let's first do it for other

00:57:06.180 animals and then we'll do it for humans to your question intrasexual competition are traits that

00:57:14.180 evolve for competition within the same sex so for example when rams evolve this very uh thick cranial

00:57:24.260 structure with those big horns so that they can butt heads with i mean literally at 50 60 miles an hour

00:57:30.180 for most of us it would lead to our death for them it just results in the winner getting all the ladies

00:57:37.860 that trait has evolved for intrasexual competition between same-sex uh parties on the other hand the

00:57:45.700 peacock's tail that i mentioned earlier evolved for intersexual competition that trait is not meant to

00:57:53.540 intimidate other peacocks it's meant to woo the ladies right so both of these forms of sexual

00:58:00.340 selection exist in nature so your question speaks to that distinction i could sometimes wear i'm speaking

00:58:09.060 as a woman now i could wear high heels as a form of intersexual signaling because i am trying in this case

00:58:19.300 to draw the attention of men to draw the attention of men on the other hand when i

00:58:26.020 don myself in luxury brands i'm engaging in intrasexual competition right as i mentioned earlier men don't

00:58:35.940 typically go oh my god sydney sweeney you're gorgeous but you're not wearing high-end uh balenciagas

00:58:44.260 right sorry no sex for you tonight right but on the other hand women will compete with each other

00:58:53.380 using those cues of luxury and and actually there is a paper maybe that's what you were thinking of

00:58:58.980 or or maybe you did read it in some of my stuff but there is a paper not published by me uh i think

00:59:04.180 it was published in journal of consumer research that exactly made that point which is why would women

00:59:10.180 ever be interested in luxury brands if men don't care about that signal well because they're not

00:59:16.020 trying to impress men in that case no i think um fair point but what i think i was referring to is um

00:59:22.180 and i'll butcher it but tell me there is uh men women and women women in advertising and specific kind

00:59:28.020 of women are used to advertise to men because they appeal to the male gaze instantly like they are

00:59:32.420 generally more curvy and you know broad like bigger breasts whatever and there is a woman woman that is

00:59:38.340 maybe not as hot in the evolutionary sense but more beautiful that appeals to women specifically

00:59:44.100 and it's an advertising you're saying which type of female endorser i use in advertising will come in

00:59:53.220 these two types yes right right so i i don't know if i can think of a specific study that has done that

01:00:01.780 but that makes perfect sense to me in the following way so for example to your point if i'm a very sexy

01:00:12.580 i'm a woman now i'm a very sexy waitress at a restaurant who is dressed in a scantily clad manner

01:00:23.540 what do you think will happen to the size of the tips depending on whether the patron is a male or

01:00:31.620 female patron i mean that literally will answer your question what can you tell what right so with

01:00:37.140 the male they go above normal with the female they might go below normal but stick to normal

01:00:40.900 exactly or or i'll punish her yeah right may go below normal by quite a bit yeah that that that

01:00:47.060 slut showing her uh her cleavish to us you know what i was going to give her 15 screw her okay on the

01:00:53.860 other hand for a minute and so the recognition that different and by the way that is exactly a

01:01:02.900 manifestation of the power of evolutionary thinking right it is an understanding that the exact same

01:01:11.780 stimulus will be perceived differently by different groups of consumers for very clear evolutionary

01:01:19.460 reasons and let me give you a beautiful example of that actually this is another study with

01:01:25.780 i mentioned them earlier trip at gill it was a study that we did many years later after the gift

01:01:30.740 giving one and i hate whenever i mention this study because we still haven't published it

01:01:38.660 only because you know you're busy with a million other things but maybe having this conversation

01:01:44.100 with you today will will light the fire for us to finally publish it so trip at and i about 10 years ago

01:01:49.940 had decided to do as a set of studies looking at what happens to people's perceptions of a dating profile

01:02:02.420 as a function of the types of consumer products that are shown in their profiles okay so one example

01:02:10.660 is we take a male nothing changes everything in the description is the same the photo is the same but

01:02:20.020 there's a place where it says my favorite personal possession is and we either show that it's a red porsche

01:02:29.380 beautiful or it's a sorry to anybody who owns a beaten up kia it's an old beaten up dreadful kia okay

01:02:38.100 uh nothing else changes nothing now i'm going we we measured many dependent measures but i'm only going

01:02:46.180 to focus on one now and you will see how i am answering your original question using another example

01:02:54.180 now at the end of seeing this particular uh dating app a dating ad i'm going to ask men and women

01:03:04.100 to rate how tall was this guy you ready so now i've set you up for it what do you think happens to the

01:03:16.660 guy's height as a function of whether women or men are evaluating the porsche guy so men would think

01:03:26.260 he's shorter women would think he's taller is that right that's why you're also an evolutionary

01:03:32.820 psychologist because your brain is shaped by the same evolutionary forces that have shaped my brain

01:03:40.260 i just have the official title evolutionary psychologist but so are you okay so women look at

01:03:46.740 that that actually that that product that product that product is a signal of status we have another

01:03:55.780 signal phenotypic signal of status called height therefore i magically through the magic of evolution

01:04:04.980 suddenly the same guy becomes taller in the porsche to women now look at intra versus intersexual

01:04:14.740 for a guy for a guy my biggest threat is not that you are uh cuter than me or have prettier lips than me

01:04:24.420 if you have higher status than me i don't like it therefore when i see the guy with the porsche

01:04:32.260 i engage in intrasexual derogatory tactics how do i derogate you well there are many ways one of

01:04:40.660 which i say well he must be some short little guy that's why he's overcompensating by getting the

01:04:46.020 porsche so the same product the same guy resulted in either status elongation or status contraction

01:04:55.940 depending on whether i am male or female so yes to your question you're exactly right

01:05:02.340 i wonder if there's a study to this effect because i found this phenomena we live in um

01:05:06.580 we live in a unique time and so your generation for instance god uh you grew up on television and

01:05:12.980 newspapers my father's generation who's probably a little bit older was radio newspapers and televisions

01:05:19.060 came during his time um we come with social media my nephew comes with ai and so there is this sort of

01:05:28.340 medium mapping that happens with generation when technological progress is as fast and for instance with

01:05:33.780 my father anything that's written he automatically assumes is true and so he's so susceptible to

01:05:38.180 advertising and propaganda that's written for me and my colleagues i find anything that they see

01:05:43.140 on a screen given what's going to happen with sora given what's going to happen with artificial

01:05:46.740 intelligence man they automatically assume it's correct and then they have to recheck in their

01:05:50.340 head be like maybe it's not you know there's a lot of fake news around and so on and so forth

01:05:54.420 i wonder if there's a study about how generations rely on specific mediums for advertising and how

01:05:58.980 susceptible they might be to it is there some data on that i don't know if there is data but but

01:06:03.700 someone is going to take exactly what you just said and steal it and turn it into a phd dissertation

01:06:09.940 the way that you just laid out is exactly the mechanism that i try to teach my students when i'm saying

01:06:18.180 come back to me with 10 different research questions don't start giving me convoluted stuff i just want

01:06:26.100 a single sentence and if i read that sentence and i fully understand what your research question is

01:06:32.900 you're exactly on the right track so if i say uh does women's ovulatory cycle affect their clothing

01:06:40.820 choices a 10 year old will understand that so your question that you asked perfectly fits that i i exactly

01:06:49.540 get there's an intergenerational element there is a likelihood of being persuaded i get it so i don't

01:06:56.900 think that there is any study that at least that i'm aware of that has looked at that but certainly the

01:07:02.340 way you've laid it out makes sense to me but that speaks in a sense to a greater universality which is

01:07:10.180 intergenerationally the mechanism by which i try to persuade you changes but the capacity for the

01:07:18.660 architecture of the human mind to be to use advertised exactly is an inherent part right

01:07:28.100 all that changes is the mode of delivery by which i get to you but i can always find the frailties in

01:07:35.540 your in your mind you know um we are like i have one large theme to cover before we finish but it just

01:07:42.180 struck me and i think it's my folly it would have been great to talk to you about why people consume

01:07:46.580 certain ideologies and from that it would have gotten into say the technology side and how sort of

01:07:53.380 the world operates in the non-material sense but maybe the intellectual sense so maybe at a later

01:07:58.580 point but i wonder with these algorithms and you see this now right um outrage which is pure anger

01:08:03.860 has become this common participatory ritual of a sort we all engage in anger whether it's directed

01:08:08.820 this side or that side and it happened very recently with this sydney sweeney ad right where

01:08:13.620 on one level outrage was being consumed on another level jeans and i mean like american eagle jeans

01:08:19.700 i mean levi's jeans like jeans were being consumed not jeans as in how you might use it in a lab um

01:08:25.620 what do you think of that what do you think happened there what do you think from an evolutionary

01:08:28.900 point of view well you're taking an emotion that is easy to deploy so usually when you get angry in a

01:08:38.420 situational sense it's it it it has to be easily deployable right so for example if i'm taking a

01:08:45.380 shortcut down a uh you know a dark alley and someone accosts me aggressively it wouldn't make sense that it

01:08:54.100 would take 30 minutes for me to build up a uh an evolutionary based anger response right because i detect a

01:09:03.300 threat there's an autonomic mechanism that says you better rise up to that challenge quickly and

01:09:10.180 so to your question and to the earlier one where i said oh it's just new modes of delivery for a

01:09:17.380 mechanism that is part of our indelible human nature what social media is doing is it's sending us down

01:09:24.900 that dark alley every second of the day right so someone says something to me on social media

01:09:31.300 that could be viewed as defamatory insult to my character guess what you're attacking me in the

01:09:40.420 alley i'm now going to get pissed so oftentimes people say you know you you put out a lot of

01:09:46.980 positive content professor sad and so on but you seem a lot more intimidating and combative on social

01:09:53.620 media than when i meet you in person you seem so much more friendly and affable in person how do you

01:10:01.060 explain that i go well that's the difference between disposition and situational traits by

01:10:07.060 disposition i'm very affable and warm but if you keep accosting me in obnoxious ways on social media

01:10:13.780 you are going to trigger the honey badger in me so i think that's what's happening in terms of the

01:10:18.820 outrage now oftentimes the outrage is not well justified but that's what social media does to us

01:10:25.300 it is tickling this easily deployable emotion which makes evolutionary sense in the dark alley

01:10:32.260 perhaps doesn't make evolutionary sense when we get pissed because sydney sweeney says i wear nice jeans

01:10:38.100 right um and i mean i wonder why morality is such an interesting part of it because so first of all

01:10:44.020 social media is very unique in which it'll find all participants worthy of anger in its quest to engage

01:10:49.940 most people right so it literally searches for people with specific emotions to maximize engagement

01:10:55.540 but then anytime i see this anger and it could be from whatever political side it could be from

01:10:59.940 whichever ideological background it always garbs itself in morality that there is a higher morality

01:11:06.660 and you have somehow betrayed it and you are not part of it and i need to point out that you are lower

01:11:11.060 morality and this is the standard morality or else it doesn't work where is the principle of morality

01:11:16.420 playing into evolution and how important is morality in evolution yeah wow uh so a couple of couple of

01:11:21.620 ways to answer this first one thing that upsets me greatly is what not that you've done this but will

01:11:30.020 often happen is when people are usually arguing for the unique insights of religion as compared to science

01:11:39.700 they usually will invoke the morality argument to explain why religion is so important they say

01:11:47.140 if it if it if it isn't through some divine source that we get our morality then how do you know

01:11:54.900 what's right or wrong complete nonsense because there are very clear evolutionary arguments which i won't

01:12:02.260 necessarily get into now there are very clear evolutionary arguments many books written many articles

01:12:07.780 written scientific articles explaining why the moral sense would have evolved in a social species

01:12:14.180 like human beings so it's not in the least bit mysterious how you would explain morality from an

01:12:20.180 evolutionary perspective but to to your more specific pointed question and here i i keep joking about

01:12:28.100 this but i'm being truthful uh i have so often in the recent past uh plugged this particular book that i'm

01:12:37.540 now thinking that i need to write to those two authors to tell them that i deserve some of their book

01:12:42.820 royalties how many times i've plugged it and i'm going to now plug it again there is a book by two

01:12:50.260 french psychologists called uh dan sperber and hugo mercier the book is titled the enigma of reason and they

01:12:59.380 basically argued in the book that we haven't evolved the capacity to reason in the quest of some

01:13:06.900 objective truth but rather to win arguments now that already is quite a pessimistic perspective

01:13:16.100 to someone who tries to develop a mind vaccine so that people can actually navigate the truth

01:13:22.660 because the reality is most people go la la la i don't want to hear it my tribe is right and therefore

01:13:29.700 my tribe is right and no amount of evidence that you could ever offer me professor saad is ever going

01:13:35.540 to move me from my anchored position so now how do we link that to morality one of the ways

01:13:41.460 i ensure that my tribe is always right is to invoke a moral justification for my position right now that

01:13:51.220 could be totally false and could be could be incorrect but if i can put the weight of morality on my side

01:13:59.220 that makes it that much easier for me to win the argument and i hate to say this not to turn it

01:14:04.740 political the left is much more likely to do this than the right not that the right

01:14:11.220 doesn't commit its own cognitive and emotional biases but when it comes to invoking morality

01:14:19.620 to justify my position the left does it more there's the old i'm gonna botch the the saying now

01:14:25.860 but the left usually says about the right that they are morally degenerate right that's why we have

01:14:33.460 to violently respond to them because they are literally hitler whereas the right simply says hey

01:14:39.780 i think your position is wrong now let's have dinner together uh so so morality could be asserted

01:14:47.860 so that it allows me to win arguments um to your point about religion and morality there is a singular

01:14:54.980 piece from a debate between um jordan peterson and shlavojijek that settled this debate for me

01:15:00.100 right and jordan said something about it is in the presence of god that nothing is permissible

01:15:05.540 you know in the sense of bad things and then shlavoj said no no it is exactly in the presence

01:15:10.260 of god that everything is permissible take for instance 9 11 and you know you just might drop

01:15:14.740 like morality is put into question at that point but um it's also very interesting the left and right

01:15:19.460 comparison the left likes to virtue signal and we see the metastatic left likes to virtue signal and the

01:15:24.980 metastatic right is beginning to vice signal and you see how openly they're owning their racism and how

01:15:30.500 openly they're owning for instance their discrimination against the the other tribe and so you see this

01:15:35.620 metastatic political behavior on both sides it's very interesting um i want to ask you a speculative

01:15:40.820 question and i'm sure you wonder about it we are at a precipice technology forever is going to change

01:15:46.500 with the way the last few years have gone in technology after a after a somewhat um latent period

01:15:53.700 we've hit something enigmatic and this magical thing which we call natural language processing or large

01:15:58.900 language models in artificial intelligence formats robotics are on our eyes elon saying we'll go to

01:16:03.780 space we'll go to the mars and he's going to put a chip in my head and suddenly i can think of all these

01:16:09.140 all of this is happening and i just wonder with all this technological energy that's brewing how

01:16:16.500 do you think will consumption change and i know it's a purely speculative question we don't even know

01:16:21.140 what will actually become a thing what will manifest what do you think what are you seeing already

01:16:26.340 yeah it is a very open-ended question but certainly a very interesting one i can take maybe a stab at

01:16:34.820 one angle of that question although there could have been many branches we could have gone off i remember

01:16:39.300 when i was doing my mba in the late 80s there is a term that i learned that has stuck with me to today

01:16:46.500 uh called mass customization and let me step back a second uh in the in the in the production centric era

01:16:59.380 henry ford the goal then was if you remember the the the famous quip by henry ford the consumer can have

01:17:07.540 the car in any color he wants as long as it's black right now what is he saying there he's saying i don't

01:17:14.900 give a shit about what your consumer preferences are my job in a production centric economy is to

01:17:22.500 meet consumer demands so there's going to be an inflexible manufacturing system that just puts out

01:17:30.500 cars then later the marketing centric perspective comes in says no no wait a minute we have to produce

01:17:36.420 cars cars to fit the fact that there is consumer heterogeneity and so on right now mass customization

01:17:44.420 links those two together because it says can i create flexible manufacturing systems that still

01:17:52.420 appeal to the masses can i have a system that produces the run a la henry ford but that is

01:18:00.020 sufficiently flexible that it can produce different cues of products or okay well i think what ai and

01:18:09.460 technology does is it takes this mass customization mechanism and turns it into an orgiastic process

01:18:18.180 right the fact that the ai algorithm can give me i said i mean literally it's it's um

01:18:25.220 i will sometimes go to my instagram feed and when i'm doing just the the mindless

01:18:34.660 you know scrolling through the feed and i go how the hell is it possible that i am now being shown

01:18:43.060 these endless old-school vintage watches which is something that i really love what what which

01:18:52.020 behavior that i i don't remember ever entering a google search where i said show me vintage watches

01:18:59.940 but yet somehow the magic of ai is giving me things as though it is literally spewing it from my brain

01:19:09.620 and and i really can't remember what was the overt behavior that i engaged in that allowed it to guess

01:19:16.900 this but clearly i must have done something that it guessed that who knows i don't know

01:19:20.980 and so that's i think from a consumer behavior perspective is to take mass customization as i

01:19:31.140 would have learned it in the late 80s as an mba student and turn it into the capacity to engage

01:19:38.260 in this flexible delivery to every single individual on earth might perhaps be the most obvious way by

01:19:46.340 which i see ai altering how we consume i also think um we will have empathetic advertising where

01:19:53.620 listen i understand your pain buy this it'll solve it which is a very unique kind right and it slips in

01:19:59.060 i think um open ai announced their advertising bit very recently i also think it would be very interesting

01:20:05.140 to study how men women and different cultures consume chat gbd because it's become this very intimate

01:20:10.020 space for people and uh i often see a huge difference in how my wife my soon-to-be wife

01:20:14.820 and i consume chat gbd and it's like poles apart um and i i ask people like just like how i ask them

01:20:20.660 what their explore feeds on instagram are because that tells you a lot about what a person's thinking

01:20:24.340 without them saying it uh in a similar in the similar way in what do you do with chat gbd is also

01:20:29.700 very interesting because it's just so private it seems like you're having a conversation with yourself but not quite

01:20:34.020 it well remember earlier i said when you were talking about the intergenerational mode of delivery

01:20:40.180 and i said well you just came up with a phd dissertation research question well you just

01:20:44.980 came up with number two uh listen your students will be very happy research question sex differences

01:20:51.940 in chat gpt interactions and now i can i can start listing you know off the top of my head 10 different

01:20:57.940 hypotheses that i can engage in so that's perfect because by the way in every single course that

01:21:06.420 i've ever taught at the bachelor's level mba level masters of science level and phd level i always use

01:21:15.700 the following project come up with a research question propose a set of hypotheses develop the data

01:21:24.020 collection instrument to collect that data analyze the data and give me what the conclusions are give

01:21:30.340 me the practical implications give me the so i mean like they're literally doing a thesis in a one

01:21:35.460 semester course when they first come in they're like what the hell professor what are you talking

01:21:40.020 about i don't even know how to by the end of the course they will all come up to me and say

01:21:44.980 of all the things that we learn going through that process from a to z of how the scientific method

01:21:51.780 works is arguably the thing that we you know that we're most thankful for uh and so

01:21:58.260 if nothing else that people take away from our conversation you just came up with two research

01:22:02.980 questions that are worthy of a doctoral dissertation so what are you waiting to sign up for a phd program

01:22:08.100 notwithstanding very successful show whenever you invite me i think i need a i need a great advisor i

01:22:14.180 think you could do it i'm honored no but you know it's it's really interesting because i i really think that

01:22:20.900 you know it's a very powerful way for me to pick up the pedagogic value that i give to students

01:22:29.700 because when i see how when they start off the first week when they send me their research questions

01:22:36.660 how that document looks versus 13 weeks later what it looks like it's as if i could visibly see that

01:22:44.580 you've lost 100 pounds they're a different human being that's the power of the scientific method you're

01:22:50.660 right um god i have no more questions do you have any questions or any comments any suggestions for me

01:22:56.420 oh well first uh great job uh i i don't i don't give people easy compliments they have to earn it

01:23:04.260 uh your questions were totally fair totally right i loved our conversation keep doing your great job

01:23:12.660 i only have compliments for you no questions thank you god um i am waiting for your next book to come

01:23:17.460 out whenever it does i'll reach out to you we'll set up something else uh i think i i mean it i this is

01:23:23.780 probably from somebody who's non-academic i think one of your most interesting contributions to culture

01:23:28.260 has been the coinage of terms like the parasitic mind virus uh now suicidal empathy i see it being

01:23:33.700 replicated in intellectual circles in india and people may not even recognize you but they know the term and so

01:23:40.020 you put these interesting physiology and i think you need a sense of humor for that i think you need

01:23:44.100 this sort of levity for that and you don't have to take yourself super seriously for you to actually

01:23:48.260 influence culture in that way so thank you so much you've defined culture and that's that's a very

01:23:52.820 very rare compliment of all the people i get to speak to which is my privilege very few people have

01:23:57.380 defined culture and you have so thank you so much for that um and if there's anything else i can do

01:24:01.940 please let me know this has been an absolute pleasure likewise cheers

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - January 02, 2026

A Deep Dive Into Evolutionary Psychology (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_950)

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