The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think by Douglas T. Kenrick, Vladas Griskevicius Read Free Book Online

book Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite , University of Pennsylvania psychologist Rob Kurzban points out that the mind’s different systems (or modules) sometimes disagree with each other, which can lead us to behave inconsistently.This means that it’s not just Martin Luther King Jr.who’s a hypocrite—you, your neighbors,and the guy with the split brain pointing at a spoon are all hypocrites.According to Kurzban, the nature of our divided mind suggests that there is no “I”; instead, each of us is a “we.”
    Despite the mounting evidence for multiple selves, the idea that each one of us has a single unitary self remains intuitively compelling and widespread.For rational economists, the number-crunching business whizzes we met in the last chapter, a cornerstone assumption about human behavior is that people have stable preferences.If you choose to put cream and sugar in your coffee on Tuesday in Birmingham, Alabama, you are also likely to choose cream and sugar with your coffee in Memphis, Tennessee, on Wednesday.
    This assumption about stable preferences is pervasive in business and psychology.Advertisers, for instance, look to pitch particular products to matching market segments.They don’t place ads for Harley-Davidson motorcycles in church periodicals.Financial advisors categorize their clients according to various investment risk-tolerance profiles and avoid recommending highly risky and volatile stock opportunities to librarians.Personnel officers try to match the right person for the right job and steer clear of placing artistic coffeehouse types in the accounting department.In all of this, there is a presumption that a given consumer, investor, or job applicant will be the same tomorrow as today, the same in an hour as now, and the same in another building as in this one.
    But what if each one of us is really several different people?
    If each of us actually has multiple people living in our heads, this has radical implications for the way we think about behavior.Instead of having just one self, we are really a collection of selves—a group of subselves .Like different personalities, each of your subselves has peculiar quirks and preferences.And each comes out only when you are in a particular situation.At any one time, only one subself is in charge, which is the current you at that moment.
    If we are a multiplicity of subselves, this suggests that even though we feel like we are the same person all the time, we might actually change who we are depending on where we are, what we’re doing, and who else is around.To see how this might work, let’s take a closer look at a study showing how the same person will respond very differentlyto an advertisement, depending on which subself is currently in the driver’s seat.After that, we’ll more formally introduce whichever one of your subselves is reading this book to the other people living inside your head.
    PRIMED FOR PERSUASION
    Before proceeding with our program, we’d like to take a moment for a brief word from our sponsor—the Nouvelle Breton Café.The Nouvelle Breton provides a completely unique experience, as noted by a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times: “It is truly a one-of-a-kind place that has yet to be discovered by others.”Gina Polizzi from Pacific Food News calls it “a unique place off the beaten path.”If you’re looking for a great dining experience different from any other, look no further than the Nouvelle Breton Café.
    Given that description, would you go out of your way to dine at the Nouvelle Breton Café?
    What if you’d instead seen an ad emphasizing that this café was the most popular restaurant in the area, noting that over 1 million people have eaten there, and stating that “if you want to know why everyone gathers here for a great dining experience, come join them at the Nouvelle Breton Café.”
    Here’s a more general question for your inner marketing consultant: Which of the two ads do you think would be more