The Rational Animal by Douglas T. Kenrick & Vladas Griskevicius

Author:Douglas T. Kenrick & Vladas Griskevicius [Kenrick, Douglas T.; Griskevicius, Vladas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books

7

Gold Porsches and Green Peacocks

WHEN THE EDITORS OF Consumer Reports prepare their annual list of “Best Buys,” they are unlikely even to consider the Porsche Carrera GT. The vehicle has very little cargo capacity and only two seats, gets terrible gas mileage, and is frightfully expensive to repair. Whereas $15,900 could buy you the top-rated consumer-pleasing Honda Civic, which has more cargo capacity, better mileage, and room for three more passengers, the Porsche will run you over $480,000, not counting the $14,800 dealer prep charge and the $5,000 delivery fee. And if you think that sounds like a lot of dough, the standard price wasn’t high enough for one fellow—a Russian man had his Porsche meticulously plated with over forty pounds of gold. Why would anyone shell out so much money for a speedy sports car and then spend even more to weigh it down with a layer of heavy metal?

In his 1899 classic The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to refer to people’s tendency to buy and show off expensive goods—with the goal of impressing other people with their wealth or status. The gold-plated Porsche may seem like an extreme example of this phenomenon, but it pales in comparison to other acts of extravagance. Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis’s opulent yacht was larger than a football field and featured a mosaic-tiled dance floor that could be retracted to reveal a swimming pool. The barstools on the boat were covered in garishly expensive soft leather, custom made from the foreskins of whale penises. And the excess even extended into the bathroom—the toilet fixtures were made of solid gold!

Conspicuous consumption is not some rare phenomenon found only among the superrich. Thousands of young people scraping by in poverty-ridden housing projects expend their scarce dollars on gaudy jewelry and $200 sneakers. In one popular hip-hop song, the rappers proudly show off their diamond-encrusted gold and platinum “grillz,” devoting a good portion of the lyrics to bragging about how much cash they dropped for these custom-made retainer-like decorations on their front teeth. While a Porsche Carrera can at least transport you to your destination, a set of diamond-encrusted grillz is worse than useless. Not only are they a handicap when eating and closing your mouth, but as one of the rappers observes, wearing them is like “chewin’ on aluminum foil.”

Why do people spend money they don’t really have on things they don’t really need to impress people they don’t really like or know? Here we examine the deeper reasons behind conspicuous consumption. By looking under the surface, we will discover something very important: we often don’t really know why we do the things we do. Although we’re aware of some of the surface motives for our actions, the deep-seated evolutionary motives often remain inaccessible, buried behind the scenes in the subconscious workings of our brains’ ancient mechanisms. This is important because it means that asking people why they throw money around the way they do will rarely yield the underlying evolutionary reason.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.