Spent

While reading my guilty pleasure, Psychology Today, I heard about the book Spent. Spent examines human spending behaviour and critiques consumerist culture. According to author, Geoffrey Miller purchases are powerful indicators of our personality, we use them to lure both friends and mates. The book agrees with the notion that individual personalities vary along six axes; intelligence, openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability and extroversion. Miller believes that variation in these basic categories reflect genetic inheritance, preferences for each vary among societies, moments in time, and within individual lives. He jokes about popular culture and at the things we buy to inflate our self-esteem and to try to make ourselves more attractive. One of the things I find most interesting is how the book is said to give us a better understanding of our own personalities to help us avoid consumerism. Miller also discusses how after millions of years of evolution, we still resort to expensive and ridiculous substitutes for our true personalities and identities.

I know what book I want for Christmas.