The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - The Consuming Instinct - TEDx Lecture at Concordia University (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_734)

00:00:00.000 You know that you've made it big when somebody introduces you with only one name.

00:00:07.480 So I'm like Madonna and Cher now.

00:00:09.040 He doesn't have to mention my last name.

00:00:11.520 So thank you for all being here and for waiting to the last talk.

00:00:16.300 I can't promise you that I'll be as exciting as Nomadic Massive or as Owen with his mash

00:00:22.420 mashing up, but I'll try to keep you entertained.

00:00:25.240 So basically the past 15 years or so I've been trying to infuse evolutionary psychology

00:00:31.640 into the study of consumption.

00:00:34.240 The idea being that if you look at these faces, of course there are very, very important cross-cultural

00:00:43.780 differences that define these people, but underneath these differences there's a bed of human universals

00:00:52.540 that are very much rooted in our common shared human nature.

00:00:57.680 And so to quote E.O. Wilson, the famous Harvard evolutionary biologist, he said that the genes

00:01:02.000 hold culture on a leash, to which I would simply add the genes hold consumer behavior on a leash.

00:01:07.820 So of course culture is malleable, but it is malleable within our biological constraints.

00:01:13.080 So this idea of nature versus nurture is one that has come up in many, many different fields,

00:01:19.820 many different contexts.

00:01:21.220 Are charismatic leaders born or are they made?

00:01:24.220 So in the context of consumer behavior, I'll give you one such example.

00:01:27.100 So toy preferences is typically the example that social scientists use to demonstrate that we are socialized

00:01:32.780 to be consumers.

00:01:34.140 So little Johnny plays with the blue truck aggressively,

00:01:37.860 while little Linda plays with the pink doll in a very nurturing way.

00:01:43.220 And it is this cascade of gender socialization that eventually leads us to be little boys,

00:01:48.520 you know, grown-up males or females.

00:01:50.720 It turns out that that's not quite so accurate,

00:01:52.960 so let me just very briefly discuss a few findings that demonstrate that some of these preferences

00:01:57.240 are actually quite innate.

00:01:59.040 Children who are in the pre-socialization stage,

00:02:01.220 meaning that they don't yet have the cognitive development to be socialized,

00:02:04.960 also display these sex-specific toy preferences.

00:02:09.640 Little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia,

00:02:13.720 which is an endocrinological disorder that masculinizes little girls, 0.81

00:02:18.400 they tend to then have sex preferences, I mean toy preferences that are very much like little boys.

00:02:24.480 And then if you do studies with other, some of our cousins, primate cousins,

00:02:29.140 rhesus monkeys and vervet monkeys,

00:02:30.920 they have very much the same sex-specific toy preferences.

00:02:34.520 So that puts a bit of a damper on the idea that we are just empty minds

00:02:39.360 who are subsequently socialized.

00:02:41.840 And if you're wondering why the baby is extremely beautiful,

00:02:45.080 that's because of the beauty of my wife who's here in the room. 0.98

00:02:54.020 That's a belated Valentine's gift.

00:02:58.280 Now that puts me...

00:02:59.980 I don't have to pay her any fancy flowers and so on.

00:03:02.760 To give you a sense of how powerful evolutionary psychology is

00:03:08.660 in understanding even, you know, daily events,

00:03:11.880 I'll just share one example continuing with the story of my little daughter.

00:03:16.360 So when my wife was pregnant with our daughter Luna,

00:03:19.780 of course we got the requisite two-month ultrasound.

00:03:22.560 We put it up very proudly on the refrigerator.

00:03:25.560 Mother-in-law came over with my father-in-law and she looks at these images.

00:03:31.340 Now these images, I should point out, they could be those of a lizard.

00:03:35.040 They could be those of an amoeba.

00:03:37.020 They could be those of an alien.

00:03:38.660 Yet she looks at it and arrestingly says,

00:03:41.400 Oh my God, Gad, the baby looks exactly like you.

00:03:47.840 He has your profile, can't you see?

00:03:49.960 Now why would that be related to evolutionary psychology?

00:03:53.420 Well, it turns out that when children are born around the world, right?

00:03:57.180 So this is not specific to Peruvian culture or Israeli culture.

00:04:00.640 It's very much a human universal.

00:04:02.860 When kids are born, usually the mother's side of the family

00:04:07.740 will very, very quickly proclaim that the newborn baby looks exactly like the father.

00:04:12.960 The reason for that is because it's a mechanism, it's a cultural mechanism

00:04:16.820 to try to assuage threats of paternity uncertainty.

00:04:21.720 But in this case, this is the first scientific case

00:04:25.180 where this mechanism happened in utero.

00:04:28.560 So I've already made my daughter famous

00:04:31.520 even before she could at that point speak or think.

00:04:35.360 So for the rest of the talk today,

00:04:37.060 I'll talk about some of the research that I've been doing

00:04:40.240 linking how our survival instinct manifests itself in consumer behavior

00:04:45.200 and then also our reproductive instinct. 0.96

00:04:47.340 So if here, of course, food is probably, you know,

00:04:50.380 the consumption act that is most closely linked to our survival.

00:04:54.760 So if you look at the hummingbird,

00:04:56.840 he has to eat roughly 1.5 to 3 times its body weight per day

00:05:01.340 because of its high metabolism in order to be able to survive.

00:05:04.920 So he's got a good reason why he has to eat so much.

00:05:07.460 On the other hand, all-you-can-eat buffets,

00:05:10.680 all-you-can-have vacation packages, super-sized meats,

00:05:14.620 cater to the same instinct of hoarding and gorging.

00:05:18.360 Unfortunately, we don't have his metabolic rate,

00:05:20.320 so we end up with these dreadful diseases.

00:05:22.780 Continuing with the same line of thinking,

00:05:26.020 we have this incredible innate preference for fatty foods.

00:05:30.000 Few of us prefer raw broccoli to chocolate mousse

00:05:33.400 or to a juicy steak.

00:05:35.040 So if you look here at the grizzly bears,

00:05:37.260 they're eating fatty salmon, you know,

00:05:40.100 prior to going into semi-hibernation.

00:05:42.080 If you look at the top 10 restaurants around the world,

00:05:44.520 they have one thing in common.

00:05:46.020 They deliver fatty foods to us that is tasty.

00:05:50.100 It's not that they have good advertisements.

00:05:51.960 It's not that they have nice jingles.

00:05:53.540 It's that they deliver a product

00:05:55.220 that is perfectly congruent with our evolved taste buds.

00:05:58.480 And this is exactly what the Atkins diet did, right?

00:06:00.700 The Atkins diet did, said, hey, look, you could eat as much as you want fatty steak, eggs,

00:06:05.620 you could eat bacon, and you're going to lose weight.

00:06:08.120 Great, sign me up, right?

00:06:12.060 Interestingly, though, cross-cultural differences in culinary traditions

00:06:16.180 are also themselves due to biology.

00:06:18.380 So if you look at cultures that are predominantly meat-based,

00:06:22.560 so look at the top smoked meat sandwich,

00:06:24.860 or predominantly vegetable-based,

00:06:26.720 or how much spices are used in a culinary tradition,

00:06:29.800 how much salt consumption is used,

00:06:31.920 how much pickling happens in a culture,

00:06:34.600 each of these culinary traditions

00:06:36.620 turn out to be adaptations to the local environment.

00:06:39.940 And what specifically,

00:06:41.200 it's correlated to the latitude of the country,

00:06:43.400 which is, of course, correlated to the ambient temperature,

00:06:45.740 which is correlated to the density of the food pathogens in that culture.

00:06:50.080 So rather than simply saying that here we have an example of,

00:06:53.800 oh, it's due to culture,

00:06:55.100 an evolutionary approach allows you to understand

00:06:57.500 what is the ultimate explanation for that cultural difference.

00:07:03.660 Moving on to mating,

00:07:05.200 something that I think everybody here would be interested in.

00:07:08.080 If you look at the cardinal,

00:07:10.480 he's engaging in what's called nuptial gift-giving.

00:07:12.700 In many species, you offer a gift.

00:07:15.720 The male cardinal, if you see,

00:07:16.900 he's got a food morsel in his mouth.

00:07:18.560 He's saying, hey, look, I can provide for you.

00:07:20.920 And as a measure of how well I can provide for you, 0.97

00:07:23.940 how about you grant me sexual access to you? 0.99

00:07:27.160 And, of course, 0.98

00:07:28.100 we engage in endless forms as consumers

00:07:31.220 in exactly this behavior.

00:07:34.140 The diamond rings that we have to offer

00:07:36.280 have to be a costly signal.

00:07:38.080 Otherwise, the ladies wouldn't be able to, you know, 1.00

00:07:41.360 assort the difference between the faker and the true soother.

00:07:45.080 Therefore, I have to pay 25% of my yearly income

00:07:47.880 to show you that I am truthful.

00:07:50.000 And hopefully then,

00:07:51.280 you will give it up just like the female cardinal. 0.94

00:07:58.600 We use products as sexual signals, right?

00:08:01.060 So if you look at the peacock over here,

00:08:03.100 the hen seems to be rather uninterested.

00:08:06.160 And he's saying, look at my tail.

00:08:08.240 Look how big it is.

00:08:09.260 Look how symmetric it is.

00:08:10.780 Look how iridescent the colors are.

00:08:13.000 This is why you have to choose me,

00:08:14.680 because my phenotypic quality is so great.

00:08:17.040 Well, I've argued in several of my books

00:08:20.360 that consumers do exactly that, right?

00:08:24.160 Many times we use products,

00:08:26.400 either men or women,

00:08:27.640 to improve our position in the mating market.

00:08:31.160 So a few years ago,

00:08:32.020 with one of my former graduate students,

00:08:33.940 John Vungas,

00:08:34.900 we decided to test this idea.

00:08:36.520 We brought in people into,

00:08:38.220 not people,

00:08:38.920 we brought in males into the lab,

00:08:40.940 and we had them drive either a fancy,

00:08:43.160 it's not imagine driving a Porsche,

00:08:45.020 they actually drove a Porsche,

00:08:46.880 or they drove a beaten up,

00:08:48.600 rusted old sedan

00:08:49.900 in one of two environments,

00:08:51.660 either in downtown Montreal,

00:08:52.860 where everybody could see you,

00:08:54.360 or in a semi-deserted highway.

00:08:56.400 By the way,

00:08:57.420 try to get a granting agency

00:08:58.900 to release money,

00:09:00.760 and convince them

00:09:01.520 that you're not going to use the Porsche

00:09:03.060 for your own personal sinister pursuits.

00:09:07.300 Now, what were some of the dependent measures?

00:09:10.020 At the end of each of these conditions,

00:09:12.660 these driving conditions,

00:09:13.900 we collected salivary assays,

00:09:16.300 which then help us measure

00:09:17.700 their fluctuations in their testosterone levels.

00:09:21.100 And what do you think happened

00:09:22.200 when you put young males in the Porsche?

00:09:24.680 The endocrinological response is outlandish.

00:09:28.440 Now, we had thought

00:09:31.520 that, yes, testosterone would go up

00:09:34.640 in both environments,

00:09:36.120 but it would go up a lot more

00:09:37.960 when everybody could see you.

00:09:39.580 So in downtown Montreal,

00:09:40.680 it would go up a lot more

00:09:41.580 than on the semi-deserted highway.

00:09:43.620 The guys couldn't give a damn,

00:09:45.020 put me in a Porsche, 0.92

00:09:46.220 their testosterone shot through the roof.

00:09:50.520 Just to continue with this point,

00:09:53.560 cars as sexual signals,

00:09:55.240 continuing with that theme,

00:09:57.400 this is a study that was done two years ago

00:09:58.840 by some British psychologists.

00:10:00.900 These are the actual stimuli that they use.

00:10:02.740 You take the same guy,

00:10:03.760 you put him either in a Ford Fiesta

00:10:05.380 beaten up old car,

00:10:06.580 or in a Bentley,

00:10:07.800 and you ask women to rate this guy

00:10:09.660 in terms of how physically attractive he is.

00:10:11.760 You're not talking about his status,

00:10:12.840 just physically how beautiful is this man.

00:10:15.520 And you do the same thing with the woman,

00:10:17.520 and men have to judge it. 0.77

00:10:18.960 Men couldn't give a damn, 1.00

00:10:20.020 the car that the lady was driving.

00:10:22.860 On the other hand,

00:10:23.720 the women, 0.96

00:10:24.240 when the guy is in the Bentley,

00:10:25.760 oh my God, he's Brad Pitt.

00:10:28.380 When he is driving in the other car, 1.00

00:10:30.080 oh no, I don't like losers like this. 0.98

00:10:32.800 So again, it shows you 0.97

00:10:34.100 how these products are quite intoxicating

00:10:37.220 in terms of how it helps us

00:10:39.360 position ourselves in the mating market.

00:10:42.180 Of course, not only men engage

00:10:44.400 in sexual signaling,

00:10:45.740 the ladies are also guilty of such pursuits. 1.00

00:10:48.600 On the left-hand side,

00:10:50.020 we've got a female baboon 1.00

00:10:51.280 who's an estrus,

00:10:52.660 and she's an estrus 0.99

00:10:53.820 engaging in conspicuous advertising 0.99

00:10:56.440 of her genitalia. 0.96

00:10:57.880 I think I could speak safely 0.92

00:10:59.240 for all men here

00:11:00.220 that we would not want

00:11:01.780 our human females

00:11:02.920 to be conspicuously displaying

00:11:04.460 their genitalia in this way. 0.99

00:11:06.160 But sticking true to the pink theme, 0.96

00:11:09.200 what they certainly do do

00:11:10.660 is that they will dress

00:11:12.120 much more provocatively

00:11:13.180 when they are maximally fertile

00:11:14.560 in their menstrual cycle.

00:11:15.500 So with one of my doctoral students

00:11:17.680 who's here in the room,

00:11:18.480 I can't see him

00:11:19.020 because I'm blinded by the lights,

00:11:20.520 Eric Stenstrom,

00:11:22.340 we've done a very, very thorough study

00:11:25.180 where we've looked at

00:11:26.040 how the menstrual cycle

00:11:27.040 affects women's behaviors 0.98

00:11:28.760 as consumers,

00:11:29.680 one of which is

00:11:30.640 how much do they engage

00:11:31.740 in beautification

00:11:32.520 as a function of whether

00:11:33.860 they are in the luteal phase

00:11:35.100 or the fertile phase

00:11:36.560 of their menstrual cycle.

00:11:38.740 Continuing on

00:11:39.820 with this idea

00:11:41.480 of sexual signaling,

00:11:42.560 a few years ago

00:11:44.540 I had an undergraduate student

00:11:46.740 who at the end of the course

00:11:47.860 came to me and said,

00:11:49.580 Professor Saad,

00:11:50.340 I have to work with you.

00:11:51.600 Could you hook me up

00:11:52.580 with some project?

00:11:53.340 I want to work,

00:11:53.900 I want to do anything.

00:11:54.900 So I thought about it for a while

00:11:56.100 and I said,

00:11:57.480 this is a male student,

00:11:58.840 I said, okay,

00:11:59.500 well how about

00:12:00.220 if I were to give you

00:12:02.140 the following project,

00:12:03.160 you're going to surf porn sites

00:12:05.100 for the next one month. 0.69

00:12:08.440 To which he looked at me

00:12:10.000 and his eyes told me,

00:12:11.740 Professor Saad,

00:12:12.800 I love you.

00:12:18.580 So what was the point

00:12:19.700 of the project basically?

00:12:21.400 I wanted to test

00:12:22.540 whether the,

00:12:23.620 what evolutionary psychologists

00:12:24.660 have talked about,

00:12:25.440 this idea of a preference

00:12:27.220 for the hourglass figure,

00:12:28.700 which is a waist to hip ratio

00:12:30.240 of 0.7,

00:12:31.840 whether I could actually

00:12:33.340 pick it out

00:12:34.140 by doing a content analysis

00:12:36.200 of how female escorts 1.00

00:12:38.460 advertise themselves

00:12:39.480 on the internet.

00:12:40.280 So typically,

00:12:41.160 you know,

00:12:41.420 my height is five foot three,

00:12:43.180 here are my measurements,

00:12:44.180 here's my weight,

00:12:44.880 here's my feet.

00:12:45.840 And so what I had this

00:12:46.840 very lucky male

00:12:48.620 undergraduate student do

00:12:50.220 is just surf

00:12:51.520 different sites.

00:12:53.160 He ended up gathering data

00:12:54.700 of more than

00:12:55.340 1,000 female escorts.

00:12:58.460 Right,

00:12:59.000 he was really assiduous

00:13:00.440 in his pursuit of science.

00:13:03.780 And it covered

00:13:05.000 48 different countries.

00:13:06.640 So nobody could say,

00:13:07.460 oh, but this is a western standard,

00:13:09.400 oh, it's due to

00:13:10.040 the Oprah effect,

00:13:11.120 it's due to

00:13:11.780 Cosmopolitan magazine.

00:13:13.600 We specifically chose

00:13:15.420 cultures that were

00:13:16.420 extraordinarily disparate

00:13:18.880 in terms of

00:13:19.680 the different metrics

00:13:20.660 that a culture

00:13:21.520 might be defined on.

00:13:22.800 And it turns out

00:13:23.960 that the average

00:13:24.480 waist to hip ratio

00:13:25.240 is exactly in line

00:13:26.500 with what is expected

00:13:27.740 from an evolutionary perspective.

00:13:29.120 Men like 0.97

00:13:29.860 a waist to hip ratio

00:13:31.400 that signals

00:13:32.640 nobility and fertility.

00:13:33.860 So,

00:13:37.000 continuing very,

00:13:38.160 very briefly,

00:13:39.140 how do some of these

00:13:40.140 sex differences

00:13:40.840 that I've been talking about

00:13:41.780 manifest themselves

00:13:42.580 in other settings?

00:13:44.120 Well,

00:13:44.540 if you were a paleontologist

00:13:45.800 and you wanted to study

00:13:46.620 the evolution

00:13:47.680 of a species,

00:13:48.900 well,

00:13:49.120 you typically would have

00:13:49.900 gone through

00:13:50.620 skeletal remains,

00:13:52.120 you might go through

00:13:52.960 the fossil records,

00:13:53.880 and then that would allow you

00:13:54.820 to reconstruct

00:13:56.240 the phylogenetic history

00:13:57.520 of a species.

00:13:58.580 Well, of course,

00:13:59.100 our minds

00:13:59.620 don't fossilize,

00:14:00.720 and so we have to find

00:14:02.160 some alternate

00:14:03.160 fossil record.

00:14:04.940 And so what I've argued

00:14:05.760 is that we could turn

00:14:06.540 to cultural products

00:14:07.720 as our fossil records

00:14:09.160 because cultural products

00:14:10.820 are ultimately created

00:14:12.080 by human minds.

00:14:13.840 And so we could do

00:14:14.440 a content analysis

00:14:15.480 on these cultural products

00:14:16.700 to help us identify

00:14:18.360 some of the evolutionary forces

00:14:20.280 that would have led

00:14:20.860 to the evolution

00:14:21.540 of the human mind.

00:14:23.220 So romance novels

00:14:24.340 are almost exclusively

00:14:25.280 read by women

00:14:26.080 around the world,

00:14:26.820 whether you're from Peru

00:14:27.580 or Egypt or Montreal,

00:14:28.840 it's read by women. 1.00

00:14:29.760 If you, for example,

00:14:31.120 look at the male archetype,

00:14:33.360 the male hero,

00:14:34.600 it's almost identical

00:14:36.680 across all romance novels.

00:14:38.680 He's never a short,

00:14:40.020 hourglass, beta male

00:14:41.780 who's afraid of his shadow.

00:14:43.540 He's larger than life,

00:14:45.000 he's tall,

00:14:45.780 he's muscular,

00:14:47.000 he's a neurosurgeon

00:14:48.160 or a king or a prince.

00:14:49.800 That's because

00:14:50.440 that particular product

00:14:51.880 caters to women's 0.82

00:14:53.100 evolved fantasies.

00:14:54.400 On the other hand,

00:14:55.300 hardcore pornography

00:14:56.300 doesn't exist

00:14:57.560 because there is

00:14:58.240 a patriarchal conspiracy

00:14:59.680 to demean women.

00:15:00.940 It exists because

00:15:01.920 it caters to

00:15:03.140 a particular

00:15:04.020 penchant in men.

00:15:06.220 And so if you want

00:15:06.800 to understand

00:15:07.280 some of these

00:15:07.780 sex differences,

00:15:08.680 look at these

00:15:09.180 cultural products

00:15:09.900 that are very successful

00:15:10.880 and you really understand

00:15:12.180 quite a bit,

00:15:12.740 not only about

00:15:13.180 our commonalities,

00:15:14.280 but also about

00:15:14.880 our differences.

00:15:16.060 Next, since we've had

00:15:17.280 the massive,

00:15:18.680 nomadic massive

00:15:19.840 and Owen

00:15:20.860 talking about music,

00:15:22.180 this is particularly

00:15:23.000 apropos,

00:15:23.600 if you look at songs,

00:15:26.080 they're a fantastic

00:15:27.560 stimulus for looking

00:15:29.900 at some of these

00:15:30.480 sex differences.

00:15:31.340 So the things that

00:15:32.100 men and women

00:15:32.740 sing about

00:15:33.520 are perfectly congruent

00:15:35.440 with universal

00:15:36.460 mating preferences.

00:15:37.700 So around the world,

00:15:38.560 men tend to place 0.86

00:15:39.400 a lot more value

00:15:40.580 on youth

00:15:41.420 and physical beauty

00:15:42.420 in prospective mates

00:15:43.400 and around the world,

00:15:44.620 women place 1.00

00:15:45.200 a lot more value

00:15:46.380 on social status

00:15:47.640 of men.

00:15:48.500 Therefore,

00:15:48.880 if you look at

00:15:49.360 the left-hand

00:15:50.340 examples,

00:15:52.660 all of these

00:15:53.320 top songs,

00:15:54.580 so Gwen Guthrie,

00:15:55.420 Destiny's Child,

00:15:56.360 TLC,

00:15:57.060 and Marina Shaw, 0.76

00:15:58.140 they're denigrating

00:15:59.020 men for having

00:16:00.040 low social status.

00:16:01.280 If you think

00:16:01.820 you're going to

00:16:02.300 get with me

00:16:02.820 and you don't

00:16:03.180 have any money,

00:16:03.980 walk away, 1.00

00:16:04.800 idiot. 1.00

00:16:05.400 Okay, I'm not 1.00

00:16:05.880 interested in you.

00:16:07.120 Okay?

00:16:07.520 There are no songs

00:16:08.740 that say,

00:16:09.560 hey Linda, 0.61

00:16:10.460 you're not working

00:16:11.340 hard at school,

00:16:12.220 I won't have 1.00

00:16:12.780 sex with you. 0.99

00:16:14.260 Right? 0.99

00:16:14.700 Thank you.

00:16:23.840 Thank you.

00:16:24.340 I feel like

00:16:24.740 I'm a comic

00:16:25.960 up here.

00:16:27.920 And of course,

00:16:28.800 when men sing

00:16:29.520 about social status,

00:16:31.020 they then show off.

00:16:32.000 I've got the goods,

00:16:32.940 I've got the Aston Martin,

00:16:34.620 there's a million songs,

00:16:36.140 Money in the Bank.

00:16:37.040 I mean,

00:16:37.280 literally,

00:16:38.000 there's at least

00:16:38.520 ten different artists,

00:16:39.700 hip-hop artists,

00:16:40.400 that have the exact

00:16:41.400 same title,

00:16:42.360 I've got Money in the Bank,

00:16:43.540 you want to get with me.

00:16:45.040 Look at the,

00:16:45.920 on the right-hand corner,

00:16:47.060 the way that men 0.96

00:16:47.660 and women navigate 1.00

00:16:48.600 in terms of their sexuality

00:16:50.820 in their song lyrics

00:16:51.900 is drastically different.

00:16:53.700 So Mickey Gilley,

00:16:54.480 who's a country music star

00:16:57.680 from the mid-70s,

00:16:58.800 had a song called

00:16:59.800 Don't the Girls 1.00

00:17:00.600 All Get Prettier

00:17:01.480 at Closing Time.

00:17:02.780 In other words,

00:17:03.700 the girl that men 0.85

00:17:04.600 are willing to sleep with

00:17:05.740 at 11 o'clock

00:17:06.660 is very different

00:17:07.840 from the creature

00:17:08.640 that they're willing

00:17:09.320 to satisfy with

00:17:11.080 at 3 in the morning.

00:17:12.720 You don't have

00:17:13.460 too many songs

00:17:14.200 that say,

00:17:14.700 don't the guys

00:17:15.540 get more handsome

00:17:16.420 at closing time

00:17:17.320 precisely because

00:17:18.680 the cost of making

00:17:20.160 a suboptimal mating choice

00:17:21.740 looms much larger

00:17:23.040 for women.

00:17:23.700 That's not due

00:17:24.220 to socialization,

00:17:25.120 that's due to

00:17:25.560 a basic biological reality

00:17:27.060 called parental investment theory.

00:17:29.600 Same thing

00:17:30.280 for physical attractiveness,

00:17:31.420 it's almost always the case,

00:17:32.940 and by the way,

00:17:33.480 it's not only true

00:17:34.240 in English songs,

00:17:35.120 it's not hip-hop

00:17:35.900 or English or soul songs,

00:17:37.120 you could do Hindi songs

00:17:38.100 and Arabic songs

00:17:39.480 and you'll find

00:17:39.940 the exact same phenomena.

00:17:43.360 So in conclusion,

00:17:44.680 exactly on time,

00:17:46.940 T. Dobzhansky,

00:17:48.280 who was a famous

00:17:48.780 evolutionary geneticist,

00:17:49.840 said that nothing

00:17:50.620 in biology

00:17:51.460 makes sense

00:17:52.700 except in the light

00:17:53.560 of evolution.

00:17:54.540 Well, I would slightly

00:17:55.360 tweak that

00:17:55.960 and say nothing

00:17:56.600 in consumer behavior

00:17:57.660 could ever make sense

00:17:58.780 without an understanding

00:18:00.080 of our evolutionary heritage.

00:18:02.140 Thank you very much.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - October 28, 2024

The Consuming Instinct - TEDx Lecture at Concordia University (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_734)

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