Evolutionary psychology is not the only productive evolutionary approach to understanding consumer behavior

Abstract

I respond to Vladas Griskevicius and Douglas T. Kendrick (G&K) and Gad Saad's (S) defenses of the view that Consumer Studies would benefit from the appeal to evolution in all work aimed at understanding consumer behavior. I argue that G&K and S's reliance on one theoretical perspective, that of evolutionary psychology, limits their options. Further, I point out some specific problems with the theoretical perspective of evolutionary psychology. Finally, I introduce some alternative evolutionary approaches to studying human behavior that could profitably be adopted in consumer research.

On the origin of tourist behavior

“…A related question raised by philosophers (Cohen and Bernard 2013;Downes 2013) is the one about evidence for the genetic inheritance of the survival systems. Although biologists, particularly those in behavioral ecology, genetics, epigenetics and gene-culture coevolution, present increasing indication for the inheritance of behavioral adaptations, the important question for tourism researchers is another one: Should we wait until philosophers and biologists have, once and for all, solved these issues or should we actively participate in the synthesis of the existence knowledge in the realm of evolutionary psychology in order to advance tourism research now?…”

The seven sins of consumer psychology

“…This concentric view of consumer theory makes it clear that our theoretical perspectives are overly narrow, putting too much emphasis on mechanistic explanations of consumer behavior. As consumer psychologists, we should be more willing to explore additional theoretical lenses, especially those that tap into the outer layers of the figure, for example, emotion theory and affect regulation research, basic motivation theory (and not just self‐regulation theory), psycho‐dynamic theory, role theory, personality psychology, group and family psychology, cultural psychology (and not just cross‐cultural), and evolutionary psychology (see, e.g., Griskevicius & Kenrick, 2013; Saad, 2013; see also Cohen & Bernard, 2013; Downes, 2013, for counterpoints).…”

Organizational evolution: socio-biological basis for understanding the metaphor

“…La psicología evolutiva reivindica grandes descubrimientos mediante ese enfoque, al cual Buller (2005) defiende como un nuevo paradigma, ya que ha visibilizado conocimientos relacionados con: módulos de detección de infidelidad, la diferencia sexual de los celos, mecanismos motivacionales que causan que padres abusen de hijastros más que de hijos genéticos, el pensamiento complejo (Chapman, 2007), las emociones (Darwin, 1916;Cosmides & Tooby, 2000), conflicto y selección sexual (Buss, 2009), el comportamiento del consumidor (Downes, 2013), entre otros aspectos. No obstante, como exponen Confer et al (2010), la reducción del éxito reproductivo individual -donde el ejemplo más obvio es la orientación homosexual-, junto al fenómeno del suicidio, son restricciones para la aplicación de la psicología evolutiva.…”