MARK320 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: The Human Instinct, Conspicuous Consumption, Portable Document Format
16 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Natural selection is the key mechanism of evolution: the word evolution does not imply a genetic improvement. Change. there is no change without a genetic mutation. A trait can be adaptive/bene cial in one environment and maladaptive/detrimental in another environment. Sometimes during reproduction there is a genetic mutation. This mutation can create a trait that can be adaptive (bene cial) in one environment and maladaptive (detrimental) in another environment. Adaptive mutations give the animal an advantage that promotes survival. For example, having a nose above our mouths enables us to smell whether food is rancid and thus, could cause us to get sick. The central premise is that the same forces of natural selection that shaped our morphological features, such as our eyes and noses have also shaped our brains, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors (and consumer behavior). How we think is part of our biology.
