Market psychology + narcissism + sex drive = flannel shirts?
November 16, 2009Jon Brooks 1 Comment »Even in this brutal economy, consumer trends develop, and Blame Flannel Shirts on Wall Street and Narcissus, from an advertising and marketing blog called Thought Gadgets, is an attempt to explain one of them.
To understand the current flannel fashion, let’s walk over to Wall Street and Greek mythology. First up, market psychology. There’s a saying that investors don’t pick stocks based on what they think will happen…or even what they think others predict will happen. Instead, market investors are three steps removed — if you think everyone else believes that others think the stock will go up, then you buy the stock. We guess about others’ desires to stay ahead.
Self-reflection starts with vanity
And everyone’s desires are tied to Narcissus…Narcissus was the handsome Greek lad who spurned the wood nymph Echo because he fell in love with his own reflection in a pool. Geoffrey Miller suggests that most humans consume goods we don’t need because we have bits of narcissicism in our psychology: the craving of others’ admiration. This is why people buy fancy leather jackets or watches or purses. You probably already have ways to stay warm in the rain, tell time, or carry cosmetics, but we crave new things because they signal our value to others.
Which is all tied to sex, of course, because if others don’t find you attractive, you don’t breed and your genes die. You, dear friend, are alive today because your caveman and cavewoman ancestors wore sexy pelts that turned each other on. Signaling status, intelligence, and creativity also pulls communities around you, useful if you need a collection of spears to fight off a stampede of mammoths.
Prediction + need = trends
These two drives — needing to signal to others and predicting how others will see our signals tomorrow — explain most of fashion. We constantly adjust our self-projections to stay ahead of what others will crave. The only way for your sperm or eggs to beat your competitors’ is to outthink their game. Which brings us around to flannel shirts. Have you seen the damned things are back in style?
Makes sense to me.
December 30th, 2009 at 1:31 am
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