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Geoffrey Miller
Spent
Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior
Viking, 2009
What's inside?
Evolutionary psychology sheds light on marketing: The items people buy send signals about their identity.
Recommendation
Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller examines modern consumer culture through a scientific lens. The result is thought-provoking, useful and often witty, but a bit uneven. Miller does of fine job of explaining evolutionary psychology and, especially, of showing how the endless purchases that define “consumerist capitalism” come from an unacknowledged need to demonstrate physical characteristics or personality traits to others. This section of the book will interest anyone seeking original social critique. The highly focused discussion of the “Central Six” personality traits provides a stable foundation for evaluating other people or marketing to them. The final section, in which Miller proposes social alternatives to consumerism, challenges existing culture, but is not nearly as convincing (or, strangely) as witty as the earlier sections. getAbstract recommends this book to marketing and human resources professionals, and to any reader who wants to think deeply about the foundations of societies and their economies.
Summary
About the Author
Geoffrey Miller is author of The Mating Mind and a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico.
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