You know that you've made it big when somebody introduces you with only one name.

So I'm like Madonna and Chair now that he doesn't have to mention my last name.

So thank you for all being here and for waiting to the last talk. I can't

promise you that I'll be as exciting as nomadic, massive, or as Owen with his

mashing up, but I'll try to keep you entertained.

So basically the past 15 years or so I've been trying to infuse evolutionary psychology

into the study of consumption.

The idea being that, sorry is it,

the idea being that if you look at these faces,

of course there are very, very important cross-cultural differences

that define these people.

But underneath these differences, there's a bed of human universals that are very much rooted in our common shared

human nature.

And so to quote E.O. Wilson, the famous Harvard evolutionary biologists, he said that the

genes hold culture on a leash

to which I would simply add the genes hold consumer behavior on a leash

so of course culture is malleable but it is malleable within our biological constraints.

So this idea of nature versus nurture is one that has come up in many, many different fields,

many different contexts, our charismatic leaders born already made.

So in the context of consumer behavior, I'll give you one such example.

So toy preferences is typically the example that social scientists use to demonstrate that we are

socialized to be consumers.

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