The Elephant in the Brain_Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

by Robin Hanson

  The fact that we often discuss our purchases also explains how we’re able to use services and experiences, in addition to material goods, to advertise our desirable qualities.13 A trip to the Galápagos isn’t something we can tote around like a handbag, but by telling frequent stories about the trip, bringing home souvenirs, or posting photos to Facebook, we can achieve much of the same effect. (Of course, we get plenty of personal pleasure from travel, but some of the value comes from being able to share the experience with friends and family.) Buying experiences also allows us to demonstrate qualities that we can’t signal as easily with material goods, such as having a sense of adventure or being open to new experiences. A 22-year-old woman who spends six months backpacking across Asia sends a powerful message about her curiosity, open-mindedness, and even courage. Similar (if weaker) signals can be bought for less time and money simply by eating strange foods, watching foreign films, and reading widely.

  Now, as consumers, we’re aware of many of these signals. We know how to judge people by their purchases, and we’re mostly aware of the impressions our own purchases make on others. But we’re significantly less aware of the extent to which our purchasing decisions are driven by these signaling motives.

  When clothes fit well, we hardly notice them. But when anything is out of place, it suddenly makes us uncomfortable. So too when things “fit”—or don’t—with our social and self-images. Any deviation from what’s considered appropriate to our stations and subcultures is liable to raise eyebrows, and without a good reason or backstory, we’re unlikely to feel good about it. If you’re a high-powered executive, imagine wearing your old high school backpack to work. If you’re a bohemian artist, imagine bringing the Financial Times to an open-mic night. If you’re a working-class union member, imagine ordering kale salad with tofu at a restaurant. (Please forgive the contrived examples; we hope you get the point.) In cases like these, the discomfort you might feel is a clue to how carefully you’ve constructed your lifestyle to make a particular set of impressions.14

  INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

  To get a better sense for just how much of our consumption is driven by signaling motives (i.e., conspicuous consumption), let’s try to imagine a world where consumption is entirely inconspicuous.

  Suppose a powerful alien visits Earth and decides to toy with us for its amusement. The alien wields a device capable of reprogramming our entire species. With the push of a little red button, a shock wave will blast across the planet, transfiguring every human in its wake. It will transform not only our brains, but also our genes, so that the change will persist across generations.

  The particular change the alien has in mind for our species is peculiar. (But we should be grateful; other planets have fared worse.) The alien is going to render us oblivious to each other’s possessions. Everything else about our psychology will remain the same, and specifically, we’ll still be able to enjoy our own possessions. But after getting blasted, we’ll cease being able to form meaningful impressions about other people’s things—their clothes, cars, houses, tech gadgets, or anything else. It’s not that these objects will become literally invisible to us. We’ll still be able to perceive and interact with them. We’ll just, somehow, no longer care. In particular, we won’t be able to judge anyone by their possessions, nor will anyone be able to judge us. No one will comment on our clothes anymore or notice if we stop washing our cars.15 It will render all our purchases completely inconspicuous. And, for what it’s worth, we’ll be completely aware of these changes; we will fully understand the effect the alien had on our species.

  Let’s call this Obliviation. (Not to be confused with the Harry Potter spell of the same name, which causes memory erasure.) Here’s the big question: How does Obliviation change our behavior as consumers?

  First of all, it’s unlikely to change much overnight. We all have entrenched habits that we developed long before the alien’s intervention, many of which will stick with us for a long time, even if they no longer make sense. But after a few years, and certainly after a generation or two, life will look very different.

  One important consequence is that whole categories of products will disappear as the demand for them slowly evaporates. In Spent, Geoffrey Miller distinguishes between products we buy for personal use, like scissors, brooms, and pillows, and products we buy for showing off, like jewelry and branded apparel16 (see Table 1). In an Obliviated world, clearly there’s no use for anything in the “showing off” category.17

  Table 1. Products for personal use versus for showing off

  More for Personal Use More for Showing Off

  Scissors Jewelry

  Brooms Branded apparel

  Blankets Wristwatches

  Mattresses Shoes

  Cleaning products Cars

  Underwear Mobile phones

  Gasoline Restaurants

  Life insurance Living room furniture

  But most products offer a mix of personal value and signaling value. A car, for example, is simultaneously a means of transport and, in many cases, a coveted status symbol. (Witness the wide eyes and fawning coos of friends and family whenever you buy a new car, even a relatively modest one.) After Obliviation, then, we’ll continue to buy cars for transportation, but we’ll base our decisions entirely on functionality, reliability, comfort, and (low) price. Hummers, which are expensive and comically impractical, will lose almost all of their appeal. Lexuses, BMWs, and other higher-end cars may continue to be valued for their quality, but consumers today also pay a premium for the luxury brand—a premium that would soon disappear.

  Clothes are another product category that’s part function, part fashion. In an Obliviated world, the fashion component will lose all its value. What remains is likely to be the merest fraction of the bewildering variety of clothing items available today. Think about what you wear when you’re home alone—not tight jeans or delicate silk shirts, but comfortable, inexpensive items like T-shirts, sweatpants, and slippers. Today it’s considered inappropriate to wear sweatpants to a dinner party or around the office. But in an Obliviated world, where no one is even capable of noticing, why not?

  Housing would also change substantially after Obliviation. Today we’re keenly aware that our homes make impressions on visiting friends and family.18 So as we shop around for a new house or apartment, we wonder silently to ourselves, “What will my friends think of this place? Is it nice enough? Is it in the right kind of neighborhood?” Similarly, when we buy new rugs, paintings, or furniture, we often do so hoping they’ll be admired.

  We don’t make these decisions strictly (or even primarily) for others, of course; our homes provide an enormous amount of personal enjoyment. But in an Obliviated world, spared from having to worry about what others think, we’ll certainly do many things differently. At the margin, we’ll choose to live in smaller, cheaper homes that require less upkeep. We’ll clean them less, decorate them less, and furnish them more comfortably and cheaply. Living rooms—which are often decorated lavishly with guests in mind, then used only sparingly—will eventually disappear or get repurposed. We’ll also keep smaller yards, landscaped for functionality and ease of maintenance. Many yards, even front yards, will simply be left to the birds.

  PRODUCT VARIETY

  Perhaps the most surprising consequence of Obliviation is that a lot of product variety would dry up.

  Consider the question of what to wear. In an Obliviated world, we’ll soon shift to the most functional and comfortable clothes. But we’ll also start wearing the same outfits, day in and day out. And if we happen to wear the same thing as our friends, family, and coworkers, it won’t bother us because we won’t even notice.19 Today there’s a stigma to wearing uniforms, in part because it suppresses our individuality. But the very concept of “individuality” is just signaling by another name.20 The main reason we like wearing unique clothes is to differentiate and distinguish ourselves from our peers. In this way, even the most basic message sent by our clothi
ng choices—“I’m my own person, in charge of my own outfit”—would have no place or value in an Obliviated society.

  Similar standardization would occur in other product categories like cars and houses. Today, many people cringe at the idea of cookie-cutter homes. It’s somehow less dignified to live in a house that’s identical to all the other houses in the neighborhood, or to drive the same car as everyone else on the road. It conjures an image of a totalitarian society where everyone is forced to conform to the same, tired “choices.” In an Obliviated world, however, our choices wouldn’t be restricted by an oppressive government, but simply by our own indifference.

  Another compelling reason to switch to standardized goods is that they’d be significantly cheaper. The costs of manufactured goods can be broken down into fixed costs and marginal (or per-unit) costs. Fixed costs include things like designing the good and setting up the factory. Marginal costs include the price of raw materials and the energy and labor costs associated with running the factory. When a factory produces 10,000 goods to serve a niche market, the cost of the final product is dominated by fixed up-front costs. If the same factory instead cranks out 10 million copies, the fixed costs are amortized and the final cost plummets.

  To give one example, consider the difference between a basic black Hanes T-shirt, which you can buy for $4 through Amazon,21 and a uniquely designed, custom-printed T-shirt, which will cost you more than $20 through CustomInk. That’s a fivefold difference. If all of us were willing to wear identical black T-shirts, manufacturers could keep the same looms spinning out the same items at a tiny fraction of the cost.

  The cost of variety is even greater when you consider distribution costs. Whenever you go to the store to buy clothes, for example, you’re paying for a lot more than the fabric. You’re also paying for the opportunity to choose from among all the latest fashions. Retailers have to throw away (or sell at steep discounts) all the goods that don’t sell in a given season. Major cities today offer dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of boutique outfitters, each catering to a different niche audience. All this variety adds up. Meanwhile, centralized warehouse-stores like Costco Wholesale and IKEA can offer deep discounts on their standardized wares by unlocking economies of scale and centralized distribution. If we weren’t such conspicuous consumers, choosing fashions to carefully match our social and self-images, we could enjoy these same economies of scale for many more of our purchases.

  After Obliviation, there will continue to be some variety, of course, even in the most social product categories. Clothes still need to come in different shapes and sizes, made out of different materials for different climates. Rich people will still prefer to spend some of their money on more expensive, higher-quality goods. (They won’t get any style points for wearing cashmere, but it still feels great on the skin.) And for strictly personal goods like brooms and pillows, Obliviated consumers will likely demand the same variety they do today. But the variety in many product categories will soon collapse into a few standardized models.

  It’s worth discussing, briefly, what we’re likely to do with all the money we’ll save by buying fewer, cheaper, and more standardized goods. Will we stash it all in the bank for a rainy day? Ha! Recall that the alien’s intervention makes us oblivious only to each other’s possessions. Crucially, it doesn’t render us altogether incapable of judging one another. So, after getting Obliviated, we’ll continue striving to make good impressions—just not by showing off our material goods. We’ll still play sports and spend money on gym memberships. We’ll still buy books so we can read and discuss them. We’ll continue giving to charity (see Chapter 12) and trying to earn fancy degrees from exclusive schools (see Chapter 13). Given the kind of creatures we are—ever striving to impress others—we would likely channel a lot of our savings, although perhaps not all of it, into these other activities.

  ADVERTISING

  Let’s now leave the Obliviation thought experiment and return to the real world for one final question: How does advertising affect us as conspicuous consumers—as creatures who use products to signal our good traits?

  In fact, there are a few different mechanisms by which ads coax us to buy things, and not all of them appeal to our signaling instincts. Many of them target us as rational consumers who make individual purchases for strictly personal enjoyment.

  One of these mechanisms is simple and straightforward: providing information. You’re more likely to buy a product when you know what its features are, where you can buy it, and how much it will cost. When you do a web search for “buy shoes online” and an ad for Zappos pops up, for example, the ad simply informs or reminds you that Zappos is a good place to “buy shoes online.” You don’t need to be a conspicuous consumer for this kind of ad to influence your behavior.

  Another important ad mechanism is making promises. Sometimes these promises are made explicitly, in the form of a guarantee or warranty. But just as often they’re made implicitly, as part of a brand’s overall persona. These are called “brand promises.” When a company like Disney makes a name for itself as a purveyor of family-friendly entertainment, customers come to rely on Disney to provide exactly that. If Disney were ever to violate this trust—by putting swear words in its movies, for instance—consumers would get angry and buy fewer of Disney’s products in the future. So the effect of these promises, whether they’re conveyed explicitly or implicitly, is that the brand becomes incentivized to fulfill them. And consumers respond, quite sensibly, by buying more from brands who put their reputations on the line in this way.

  But there’s at least one type of advertising that can’t be explained by any of these straightforward mechanisms. Consider this ad for Corona beer: An attractive couple lounges by a sun-lit ocean, a light breeze blowing in their hair, Coronas in hand, and not a care in the world. The ad’s caption: “Find your beach.”

  Something strange is going on here. This ad says nothing at all about the taste of Corona, its price, its alcohol content, or any other features that might distinguish it from other beers. Nor is the ad making any kind of promise. The ad is simply trying to associate Corona with the idea of relaxing at the beach—an association which is almost entirely arbitrary.22 There’s nothing intrinsic to Corona that makes it more relaxing than any other beer. We could imagine the same ad being used to sell Budweiser or Heineken—except that it might clash with the arbitrary images those other brands have been using previously to market their beers.

  Let’s call this lifestyle advertising (sometimes known as image advertising). It’s an attempt to link a brand or product with a particular set of cultural associations. This technique is used to sell a variety of products, including liquor, soda, cars, shoes, cosmetics, mobile phones, and of course clothing fashion brands. Before the recent crackdown on tobacco advertising, cigarettes were famously advertised with lifestyle associations. Recall the notorious Marlboro Man, a rugged, independent cowboy. With a different twist of fate, he could have been used to sell Camel or Lucky Strike cigarettes. Like Corona’s beach, he was a more-or-less arbitrary choice grafted onto a commodity product.

  A popular explanation for this kind of ad is that it works by targeting our individual emotions.23 Just as Ivan Pavlov trained his dogs to associate an arbitrary stimulus, a ringing bell, with the promise of food, lifestyle ads train consumers to associate a brand or product with positive emotions, like relaxation in the case of Corona or rugged, manly spirit in the case of Marlboro. With the help of a little repetition, these associations slowly work their way into our unconscious minds. Later, when we’re shopping for a product, the positive associations come flooding back to us, and we’ll be more favorably disposed to buying the product. These ads are brainwashing us (the explanation goes), and they’re doing it to us as individuals.

  Now, certainly some amount of Pavlovian training is responsible for why these lifestyle ads are so effective. But given everything we’ve seen in this book, it should come as no surprise that something more subtle an
d social is going on as well.

  To understand the social component of lifestyle advertising, we need to turn to an influential 1983 paper by the sociologist W. Phillips Davison. Davison was interested in how our perceptions and behavior can be manipulated by different forms of persuasive mass media—not just advertising, but also propaganda, political rhetoric, and news coverage of current events. He noticed that people often claim not to be influenced by a particular piece of media, and yet believe that other people will be influenced. For example, when New Yorkers heard a message from one gubernatorial candidate attacking another candidate, they said it had only a small effect on their personal voting decisions, but estimated that it would have a greater effect on the average New Yorker.24

  Davison dubbed this the “third-person effect,” and it goes a long way toward explaining how lifestyle advertising might influence consumers. When Corona runs its “Find Your Beach” ad campaign, it’s not necessarily targeting you directly—because you, naturally, are too savvy to be manipulated by this kind of ad. But it might be targeting you indirectly, by way of your peers.25 If you think the ad will change other people’s perceptions of Corona, then it might make sense for you to buy it, even if you know that a beer is just a beer, not a lifestyle. If you’re invited to a casual backyard barbecue, for example, you’d probably prefer to show up with a beer whose brand image will be appealing to the other guests. In this context, it makes more sense to bring a beer that says, “Let’s chill out,” rather than a beer that says, “Let’s get drunk and wild!”

  Unless we’re paying careful attention, the third-person effect can be hard to notice. In part, this is because we typically assume that ads are targeting us directly, as individual buyers; indirect influence can be harder to see. But it’s also a mild case of the elephant in the brain, something we’d rather not acknowledge. All else being equal, we prefer to think that we’re buying a product because it’s something we want for ourselves, not because we’re trying to manage our image or manipulate the impressions of our friends. We want to be cool, but we’d rather be seen as naturally, effortlessly cool, rather than someone who’s trying too hard.