The Consuming Instinct
What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature

This book describes common human behaviors (from why guys like driving fast cars to why women are willing to kill their feet wearing high heels) from an evolutionary perspective. Saad teaches MBAs, so it's not surprising that his analyses center on how an understanding of evolutionary psychology can......more

The aphorist, Aaron Haspel, once wrote: "Once you see human interaction as a contest to signal mating fitness, you never see it as anything else."  That's both interesting and true, but for the purposes of this review, I'm going to need to paint with a broader brush: once you see all aspects of huma......more

This book has some great brief bursts of interesting and creative insights into topics such as tattoos, hospitality, pets, friendships and toys. Saad can be quite interesting in analyzing why we eat as if there's no tomorrow. But the book is uneven, and long stretches are dull. Saad is an atheist an......more

This book traces consumption patterns back to their evolutionary origins. In many ways, this is an update of The Naked Ape of the 1960s. Helpfully, Saad reminds us that evolutionary psychology must look at behavior from two different levels. Most of us stay at the "proximate" level that describes wh......more

The author too enthusiastically applies the hypothesis that culture is based on behaviors evolution has taught us. Saad comes across as seeming to believe that 80% of our behavior is genetically predispositioned, and I think that's just too extreme a position. With regards to the nature vs. nurture d......more