The Caveman wears Prada

Notice yourself when you are talking to people whom you really care about — whether your partner, family or friends. Do you really take note of what brand of clothes they are wearing, the cars they are driving or the latest gadgets they have?

Most likely, you do not. You will notice how they behave, what they say, if they were happy or sad or if they seemed healthy or not. These are the things you notice about the people who really matter to you. So if we are all connected to someone we love, why do we care so much about buying stuff for show? And when we do, are we really aware that we are buying them for show?

We usually have choices for any kind of goods and services but many will end up choosing the one with the name, even if the candidates, including “unbranded” ones are comparable in every way. In the market place, these “stuff” are collectively called “branded” or “designer” goods. Our choice could be backed up by personal reasons — such as you want to compensate for that time when you could not afford it. Or you may have some personal aesthetic appreciation of it. Or your choice could be cultural — that you operate on a historical atmosphere of trust, much like commerce at the speed of trust and a name or brand make companies stake their reputation on their products and services. But Dr. Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist, thinks it could also be that you are still acting like our ancestors in prehistoric times. This means that if you think that shopping for designer stuff makes you such a cosmopolitan, you may have to redefine “cosmopolitan” to include cave living, hunting, and being hunted.

I saw the article on Miller’s book called Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior in the TierneyLab column of the New York Times science section. Miller thinks that our propensity to spend conspicuously comes from our subconscious that calls on us to flaunt to get a mate or at least, allies. He based this on an experiment wherein men and women were willing to spend more after being shown photographs that had to do with the opposite sex or “dating.” The reasoning goes like this: when we still lived in caves, having an accessory (as opposed to what is only necessary) means you had resources and time to spare. Showing this kind of “surplus” makes you a fit mate and ally. So shopping for “unnecessary” stuff means you are also shopping for attention to turn to you, declaring you a good mate and ally.

“Conspicuous consumption” is I think what Miller is really referring to. Thorstein Veblen was the one who coined the term “conspicuous consumption” in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899, to refer to people who use their wealth to show signals of their power in society. We Filipinos are not strangers to this. The lavish parties thrown by people in high society (perceived or real) whom we do not personally know seem to always find it so natural that they grace the spreadsheets of papers and glossy magazines for everyone’s consumption. It makes no sense that they want to impress their own families and close friends. It seems that they really want to impress strangers. But why will they do that?

Veblen thinks it is to yield influence and power but Geoffrey Miller thinks it is the unintended “habit” embedded in how we have evolved as humans. Since we are wired to always want to show that we are “fit” to survive and mate, we make use of all kinds of signals. And it so happens that the designer goods are the modern equivalent of “extra meat.” They signal, according to Miller, that we are such “great finds” because having these designer goods makes us think that we demonstrate “openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, stability and extraversion.” Miller thinks that these traits are the heavyweight traits that signal our desirability and survivability as species.

But knowing that we have this somewhat in our brains skewing our shopping lives should make us think twice. I liked what Miller said that happiness does not really depend on how well strangers see you. What makes conspicuous spending comical, wasteful and even tragic is that we are now six billion people. In the days when we lived in caves, you would have been floored if you saw another soul apart from your cave group. Now, you go out your door and they are all strangers. Those are the people you are trying to impress with your conspicuous spending. Most of them do not give a hoot apart from the entertainment value and the passing gossip you will fuel.

Miller’s idea gave me another lens through which to look at high-end malls. We may shop for designer brands for many reasons but now we can also say that cavemen and women, too, wore Prada. 

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