Perspectives of Evolutionary Psychology in Consumer Behavior

Abstract

Homo sapiens goes shopping with a mind shaped in an environment of hunters and gatherers. The study of evolutionary biology is not restricted to the physical characteristics selected through environmental pressures and their contribution to the survival and reproduction of organisms. Behavioral characteristics are also selected and there is little or no disagreement about that when the behavior is not about the homo sapiens species. Mental modules over a selected ancestor past and not necessarily adapted to the modern world influence, although not perceived, decisions to humans in shopping environments. Different mental modules as attracting partners or flirtation, its maintenance and care of the offspring, reputation and status to the group, and the response against threats to survival were selected, like physical characteristics, for their responsiveness to recurring problems this ancestral past. Cognitive biases, irrationality symptoms to behavioral economists who challenges the foundations of classical economics, are for Evolutionary Psychology the result of a deep rationality selected in an ancestral environment to solve recurring problems and not perfectly adapted to today's world. Biases today are the rationality of the past that promoted adaptation and survival. The Evolutionary Psychology is a field of study that seeks to unify the fields of evolutionary theory and cognitive psychology seeking to respond how a particular behavior, cognition, emotion and / or perception was a functional solution to an adaptive problem in evolutionary past. Incorporating principles of Evolutionary Psychology in Consumer Behavior study provides a potential target theory capable of unifying the various subfields of psychology, contributing to the generation and hypothesis testing that can help in the understanding of universal consumption phenomena in consumer trends, different stimuli that evoke each of mental modules, and understanding consumption decisions at different stages of our life. The study of Evolutionary Psychology can, in the light of the integrative characterist of Consumer Behavior field, provide subsidies based on our evolutionary past for the development and testing of hypotheses regarding the triggering of emotions, decision-making and behavioral differences in purchasing environments. We present in this paper, the assumptions of Evolutionary Psychology, based on studies of Darwin and the rise of Darwinist Behavioral schools of thought, its main contributions already published in Consumer Behavior field and developed twelve propositions research.