Homo sapiens on Vacation

Evolution and the Genetic Foundations of Human Nature

Natural selection is the mechanism by which certain traits are more likely to be passed on from one generation of an organism to the next. Evolutionary biologists have argued, however, at which level of life natural selection acts; the gene, the organism, the group, the species, or the ecosystem. The dominant view today, best articulated by Dawkins’s (2006) seminal book, is that natural selection chooses between genes and that the predominant quality of successful genes is, anthropomorphically speaking, “ruthless selfishness.” Selfishness in this context simply means that only genes which produce physical and behavioral consequences that favor survival by replication across generations will predominate. That natural selection might at times appear also to function at the other levels of life is really due to the combined effects of genes that produce this deception, according to Dawkins.

There are two units involved in the process of natural selection. The gene is the replicator unit that is close to being immortal. The organism is the vehicle unit that hosts genetic material for one generation only and that serves as a “survival machine” (Dawkins 2006, p. 34) for genetic material. Sexual reproduction shuffles the genes each generation. Thus, while the organism and chromosomes exist fleetingly, the genes are not destroyed by reproduction and, if they are sufficiently “selfish,” have the potential to survive over geologic time. While it may be the case that some single genes are solely responsible for certain physical or behavioral traits, “however independent and free genes may be in their journey through the generations, they are very much not free and independent agents in their control of embryonic development. They collaborate and interact in inextricably complex ways, both with each other, and with their external environment” (Dawkins 2006, p. 37). Wilson (1995) adds:

In the case of the most complex traits, hundreds of genes are sometimes involved, and their degree of influence can ordinarily be measured only crudely and with the aid of sophisticated mathematical techniques. Nevertheless . . . it leaves little doubt as to the presence and approximate magnitude of the genetic influence. (p. 20)

Dawkins (2006, p. 50) notes that “one of the most striking properties of survival-machine behaviour is its apparent purposiveness.” Although machines can be built or programmed with purposive behavior, humans possess a level of consciousness and self-awareness that is possible because the brain is able to simulate the world so completely “that it must include a model of itself” (Dawkins 2006, p. 59). According to Wilson (1995, p. 2), “the brain exists because it promotes the survival and multiplication of the genes that directs its assembly. The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques.” The relationship between the genes and the mind is succinctly summarized by Dawkins (2006), who notes that

by dictating the way survival machines and their nervous systems are built, genes exert ultimate power over behaviour. But the moment-to-moment decisions about what to do next are taken by the nervous system. Genes are the primary policy-makers; brains are the executives. But as brains became more highly developed, they took over more and more of the actual policy decisions, using tricks like learning and simulation in doing so. (p. 60)

The brain is therefore pre-programmed by genes to employ behavioral strategies. This does not mean that humans necessarily devise such a strategy consciously. Rather, genes build brains with an instinct to instruct the organism to behave as if a set of conscious instructions had been formulated. Some behavioral strategies will be superior to others. Maynard Smith (1982) refers to such behavior as evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS). Given that the nervous system, and therefore human nature, has evolved over millions of years, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists have endeavored to identify types and degrees of genetically influenced behavior. It is useful at this point to briefly overview some of the main behavioral themes that have been the subject of this effort and that provide a context for later exploring particular behavior in domain-specific situations, such as tourism.

Aggression is a feature of behavior in all forms of life. As survival machines, organisms seek to make best use of their environment. This places them in potential conflict with other organisms. Aggression may or may not be the best strategy for an organism since aggression itself is a threat to survival and contests are rarely symmetrical. The process of evolution pits many different strategies against one another in terms of how organisms interact. In a study of how just two such strategies would work (“hawks” vs. “doves”), Maynard Smith (1974) was able to show that the ratio of hawks to doves is evolutionarily stable.

Given the obvious reasons for competition among organisms, it may appear paradoxical that cooperation is observed to be so widespread, not just within but also across species (e.g., parasitical behavior and mutual reciprocity) (Hammerstein 2003). The classic study on the evolution of cooperation was undertaken by Axelrod (1984). In a game known as The Prisoner’s Dilemma, which is an abstract formulation of a commonly found situation in which two people must decide whether or not to cooperate, Axelrod found that when the game is played only once, the rational strategy, without knowing whether or not the other player will cooperate, is for both players not to cooperate even though mutual cooperation would lead to a better outcome for both players—thus the dilemma. However, when the game is repeated over and over, the players have the opportunity to judge the other player’s willingness to cooperate and to use encouragement and punishment to influence their behavior. The most successful strategy was found to be the simplest and superficially the least complex. It started with the assumption of cooperation but included brief retaliatory punishment whenever the other player failed to cooperate. The resulting successful, so-called tit-for-tat strategy has been found to be widespread throughout nature (Dawkins 2006).

Closely associated with cooperation is the question of altruism. Altruism occurs when an organism acts in a way that increases the survival prospects of another organism at its own expense. Why would natural selection allow such behavior to become an ESS? Researchers have examined the genetic explanation for altruistic behavior and believe that “acts of apparent altruism are really [genetic] selfishness in disguise” (Dawkins 2006, p. 4). This is most easily explained when altruism occurs among kin. Because kin may share the same gene (the closer the relationship the more likely that the gene will be shared), it has been shown that a gene which encourages kin altruism is more likely to ensure its own survival (Dawkins 2006). “Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative” (Ridley 1996, p. 249) because these instincts promote survival and replication of the gene.

The evolutionary stability of behaviors based on cooperation and altruism produces many “virtues” in human behavior (Ridley 1996). “The great advantage of human society is the division of labour, and the ‘non-zero-sumness’ it achieves” (p. 49). Driven by differences in comparative advantages between groups, humans have learned the virtues of specialization and the gains that can be obtained through barter and trade. Humans have also learned egalitarian and sharing behavior (Sober and Wilson 1998), and civilized societies have formed around the distinction between public and private goods (Ridley 1996). This was further demonstrated in a study by Henrich et al. (2010), who found that societies with higher levels of market integration display an increased sense of fairness.

The evolutionary role of status has been found to explain various aspects of human nature ( The Economist 2008a). Status is a significant determinant of sexual selection. Although status may signal an ability to provide materially for children, research suggests that what is more important is that it signals healthy genes and intelligence (Nettle and Pollet 2008). Studies on human happiness have shown that relative rather than absolute prosperity determines contentment. People are happier when they are richer than their peers, even though they may be absolutely worse off. Average happiness from one country to another seems to be related very little to national prosperity. What seems to be more important as a determinant of average national happiness is the range in income variation. Status is also believed to be an important determinant of crime levels ( The Economist 2008a).

There is considerable debate over the degree to which behavior is genetically determined (Boyd and Richerson 1985). The evidence suggests that genes and culture have co-evolved. According to Wilson (1995):

The question of interest is no longer whether human social behavior is genetically determined; it is to what extent. The accumulated evidence for a large hereditary component is more detailed and compelling than most persons, including even geneticists, realize. I will go further; it already is decisive. (p. 19)

The Biology–Culture Nexus in Human Nature

In the early pages of Dawkins’s (2006) seminal book he states:

Among animals, man is uniquely dominated by culture, by influences learned and handed down. Some would say that culture is so important that genes, whether selfish or not, are virtually irrelevant to the understanding of human nature. Others would disagree. It all depends where you stand in the debate over “nature versus nurture” as determinants of human attributes. (p. 3)

Dawkins shows how, in addition to influencing the behavior of the individual organism itself, genes also influence the behavior of other organisms as well. Indeed, he demonstrates that “the phenotypic effects of a gene need to be thought of as all the effects that it has on the world” (p. 238). This view of the “long reach of the gene” emphasizes also the likely interaction between genetic and cultural development. Lumsden and Wilson (2005) advance a theory of gene–culture coevolution. But although genes and culture evolve by different processes and in different time scales, there is an inescapable link between them. Wilson (1995) explains this best: “There is a limit . . . beyond which biological evolution will begin to pull cultural evolution back to itself” (p. 80). “The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool” (p. 167).

Similarly, Trilling (1965, p. 115) explains that “there is a hard, irreducible, stubborn core of biological urgency, and biological necessity, and biological reason, that culture cannot reach and that reserves the right, which sooner or later it will exercise, to judge the culture and resist and revise it.” The genes therefore are the ultimate arbiter of culture. Based on this premise, Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby (1992) believe that natural selection has constructed evolved psychological mechanisms that have produced universal human nature even though expressed cultural behaviors are variable. They contend that although the human mind has evolved and adapted, modern circumstances have had limited impact so far on hunter-gatherer instincts. In summary, Wilson (2000) adds:

We have come to understand that human nature is not the genes that prescribe it. Nor is it the cultural universals, such as the incest taboos and rites of passage, which are its products. Rather, human nature is the epigenetic rules, the inherited regularities of mental development. These rules are the genetic biases in the way our senses perceive the world, the symbolic coding by which our brains represent the world, the options we open to ourselves, and the responses we find easiest and most rewarding to make. (p. vii)

Memetics and Cultural Evolution

There is nothing about the concept of replication and natural selection that requires a carbon, or even a molecular, basis. In noting the similarity between genetic and cultural transmission, Dawkins (2006) coined the term meme to represent a unit of cultural imitation akin to the term gene. “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (Dawkins 2006, p. 192). Humans are very good imitators and imitation is the essential feature in the development of culture (Workman and Reader 2004). Examples of memes include ideas, tunes, jokes, religions, and fashion in clothing or architecture. Some memes are much more successful than others in replicating and surviving. The science of memetics is a younger field of study (Aunger 2000, 2002). There is some debate also about whether memetic replication might even be reducible to genetic replication. While some memes may have more psychological appeal than others, a sociobiologist might ask why that is the case—does adoption of that meme confer a biological, and therefore, genetic, advantage? (Dawkins 2006). This memetic–genetic connection is also suggested by Saad (2007), who notes that “cultural learning and its subsequent transmission to group members is an adaptive feature of human evolution” (p. 166). Henrich and Gil-White (2001) similarly suggest that

cultural transmission is adaptive because it saves learners the cost of individual learning. Once some cultural transmission capacities exist, natural selection favors improved learning efficiencies, such as abilities to identify and preferentially copy models who are likely to possess better-than-average information. (p. 168)

Having briefly overviewed the relevant fundamental concepts relating to the genetic basis of human nature, and the relationship between biology and culture, we now examine possible implications for understanding human behavior in the context of tourism.

The Human Propensity to Travel

Perhaps the most fundamental ultimate question to ask is why do people travel—why did early humans first start to travel? The fact that travel beyond familiar “home” territory evolved into an ESS indicates that there was an advantage in terms of survival and reproduction. But travel into unfamiliar environments carried with it some risk. New, unfamiliar territories were normally more dangerous. There were unknown predators and the “intruder” had the disadvantage of a lack of knowledge about the new environment. These survival risks must have been outweighed by other benefits. Most likely the reason was the availability of better resources. An alternative explanation might be that individuals, who took the risk and strayed beyond familiar territory and survived the greater dangers, had greater survival skills such as intelligence, cunning, and strength. These individuals would also have had a higher status as sexual partners as their survival prowess would have been evident. A further explanation may have been that a greater danger occurred by remaining in the home territory because of dwindling resources or perhaps intrusion by other competing tribes or species. The genes of those who failed to flee from this increasing danger would have lost out.

Wallace (1991) suggests that “every mammalian species has to move around. Indeed a key to the mammals’ intelligence is their on-the-ground activity. Humans are no different. An itch, a restlessness, is built into our nature. . . . The restlessness is a relic of our hunter-gatherer past” (p. 111). From a largely vegetarian existence living in trees, the evolution to open-savannah hunting and the increased consumption of meat by early humans lead men to focus on hunting and women to specialize in gathering (Workman and Reader 2004). Gathering, but more particularly hunting, required travel over potentially large distances combined with navigational skills. Men who excel in such skills and are the best providers of meat in modern-day hunter-gatherer societies have been found to have the most wives and extramarital affairs (Hill and Kaplan 1988). This specialization in the acquisition of food resources necessitated sharing. Wilson (2000) notes:

Sharing . . . in man . . . is one of the strongest social traits. . . . As a result only man has an economy. His high intelligence and symbolizing ability make true barter possible. Intelligence also permits the exchanges to be stretched out in time, converting them into acts of reciprocal altruism. (p. 551)

Territoriality and tribalism “is a general trait of hunter-gatherer societies” (Wilson 2000, p. 565). Tribalism resists intruders. But perhaps the success of bartering within tribes lead to interactions between tribes for the same purpose. Travel for the purpose of trade would have significantly enhanced the capacity of human societies to specialize, based on their comparative advantages, enhancing their economic and social prosperity. Such success translated also into genetic success.

The Origins of Environmental Aesthetics

The epigenetic rules of human nature were cradled and adapted in the natural environment, particularly the savannahs and transitional woodlands of Africa, resulting in “deep adaptive responses to the natural environment” (Wilson 2000, p. viii). This has resulted in an innate desire to locate on a prominence overlooking a body of water or vista where prey may be easily observed (Flannery 2005). Such embedded psychological behaviors are believed to explain the evolved responses of humans to landscapes (Orians and Heerwagen 1992). They contend that emotional responses which powerfully motivate human behavior, such as environmental aesthetics, could only have evolved because of their positive effect on survival and reproduction. The “choice of habitat exerts a powerful influence on survival and reproductive success, the behavioral mechanisms involved have been under strong selection for millennia” (p. 555). They argue that for this reason, environmental features can invoke strong positive and negative reactions. Psychological studies, such as those conducted by Ulrich (1983, 1986), have identified those landscape features that are most preferred by humans. Orians and Heerwagen (1992) state that

[using an evolutionary approach, researchers] have looked at the features of landscapes that influence exploration and information gathering. The general argument is that safe movement through the environment requires a great deal of skill and knowledge. Landscapes that aid and encourage exploration, way finding, and information processing should be more favored. (p. 560)

Temporal changes in landscapes are also important since they represent changes in climate, vegetation, prey, and fecundity. Seasonal cues help by signaling reproductive cycles. Orians and Heerwagen (1992) take their argument further and suggest that

if attention to these stimuli and events is a cross-cultural universal, as seems likely, many of these ecological signals should have been transformed, over time, into cultural events and artifacts that are used to manipulate aesthetic experiences. (p. 571)

Navigation and Way-Finding

Silverman and Choi (2005) summarize the considerable evidence that establishes the genetic, neurological, and developmental bases for navigational capabilities and differences in the way-finding abilities of males and females. Two theories have been proposed to explain the male advantage in navigation. Gaulin and Fitzgerald (1986) believe that the male spatial ability is more pronounced because males needed to be able to roam over wider ranges in order to find and attract mates. Silverman and Eals (1992) contend instead that the male advantage is more likely to be due to sexual differences in the hunting and gathering roles during the Pleistocene. The research has also shown (Silverman and Choi 2005) that males tend to use an orientation strategy based on distances and cardinal directions, whereas females more commonly employ a landmark strategy that may be easier to use when navigating over smaller distances. Research by Pacheco-Cobos et al. (2010) suggests, however, that women may be more efficient than men at navigating in certain circumstances. They conclude that their findings “are generally consistent with a domain-specific theory of foraging predicting an advantage for women on tasks involving the collection of immobile resources. . . . One the other hand, the behavior of the men can be considered generally consistent with the greater risk-taking behavior more appropriate to locating or tracking down a mobile resource and/or to locating scarce but highly valued and possibly high prestige items” (p. 296).

Kaplan’s (1992) research on the evolutionary basis of environmental preference emphasized the key role of information acquisition and use. Survival depended on an ability to learn about and use the environment in the search for food as well as for protection from threats. Survival also depended on the acquisition of knowledge to find one’s way safely. Accumulated findings “repeatedly suggested parallels between what [environments] people preferred and the environmental circumstances under which humans evolved” (p. 589). Kaplan argues that evolution has turned this innate environmental knowledge and preference into efficient and economical, automatic judgments about an environment that are the basis today for our aesthetic feelings toward environments.

Curiosity, Mystery, and Complexity

Kaplan and Kaplan (1982) suggest that mystery and complexity affect landscape preferences as a result of evolutionary-based origins. They believe that curiosity to seek new information about an environment so that it can be exploited is behind this preference. Mystery and complexity heighten feelings of apprehension and interest, producing aesthetic responses (Orians and Heerwagen 1992) as well as age-related adaptations to environmental preference. Emotional states, such as curiosity, are believed to have survival value. Although “curiosity . . . sometimes kills cats . . . cats lacking curiosity fail to learn enough about their environments to function in them as well as their more curious brethren, even though being curious sometimes has unfortunate consequences” (p. 555).

The Appreciation of Art

Art, music, singing, and dance are each believed to have evolved from biological origins (Morris 1962; Aiken 1998; Dissanayake 1992). “Music, and also art, fashion and even literature, are reckoned by many Darwinists to be the human equivalent of the peacock’s tail; done well, they show off the genetic prowess of the creator” ( The Economist 2008b, p. 18). Wilson (2000) identifies a functional basis to art:

Artistic activity . . . may well be a special manifestation of . . . tool-using behavior. . . . [E]ach man made his own tools. The appraisal of form and skill in execution were necessary for survival, and they probably brought social approval as well. Both forms of success paid off in greater genetic fitness. (p. 564)

Thus, the display of such skills may have served the purpose of demonstrating mastery and competency—both useful attributes in determining sexual selection and status. Sexual selection is predominantly aesthetically driven by adaptations to physical cues that determine attractiveness (Sugiyama 2005). As briefly noted above, one other reason for the urge to roam and explore new territory is to search for sexual mates. Sex tourism may be a manifestation of how modern transportation has enabled humans to fulfill the needs of “selfish genes.”

Ethics

Much human behavior is driven by ethics—moral rules and taboos which guide how one should live. Although traditionally the preserve of philosophers, Wilson (2000, p. 562) suggests, “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of philosophers and biologicized.” He argues that other conceptualizations either postulate a mechanism for the development of ethics without evidence, or evidence without postulating a mechanism. Fennell (2006), in his book on Tourism Ethics, also discusses the role of evolution in the development of ethical principals, noting particularly the higher intellectual capacity of humans that enables them to have greater awareness of the consequences of their actions, particularly as human society evolved from small-group, hunter-gatherer communities to tribes and larger social groups. Tourism places people in different, unfamiliar physical and social situations. The experiences and codes of behavior that they normally employ at home may be out of place. How do people decide how they will behave in such circumstances? Consideration of the evolutionary bases of ethical behavior may enrich our capacity to understand such behavioral questions in tourism.

Religion

Religion-based activities are a part of many people’s tourism experiences even if it plays only a secondary or incidental role in the vacation. Belief in a religion is now believed by many scientists to have evolutionary origins. “Religion cries out for a biological explanation. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon—arguably one of the species markers of Homo sapiens—but a puzzling one” ( The Economist 2008c, p. 83). According to a hypothesis presented by Wilson (1995) on the role of religion in natural selection, “the frequencies of the genes themselves are reciprocally altered by the descending sequence of several kinds of selection—ecclesiastic, ecological, and genetic—over many lifetimes” (p. 177). At the ecclesiastic level, Dawkins (2006) contends that established religions use “architecture, rituals, laws, music, art, and written tradition, as a co-adapted stable set of mutually-assisting memes” (p. 197) to sustain religious observance and belief. These religious conventions employ learning and memetic replication at a cultural level and time scale, rather than genetic selection. At the ecological level, Wilson (1995) argues that religious practice must also survive tests that arise over time in the environment, such as periods of war, famine, disease, and the like. At the genetic level, Wilson (1995) believes that because genes program the functioning of nervous, sensory, and hormonal systems, there is a physiological basis to religious behaviors and learning that serves to constrain and circumscribe religious social groups. Judgmental religions engender a higher sense of fairness in society, which enhances economic prosperity (Henrich et al. 2010). Thus, while it may be argued that religion leads therefore to more successful societies, an evolutionary perspective may suggest this as the reason why religion exists in the first place ( The Economist 2010).

Response to Tourism Advertising

Much tourism advertising employs sexual images to create awareness and stimulate interest. Saad (2007) extensively discusses advertising and the use of sexual imagery from an evolutionary perspective. Tourism advertising also relies heavily on the presentation of attractive scenic and landscape images. Earlier we considered the human response to landscape and discussed the aesthetic qualities that made a landscape attractive and desirable to early man. These qualities (such as water, vista, safety, curiosity, mystery, and complexity) are commonly used in tourism advertising to stimulate interest. Saad (2007) also contends that some advertising slogans may work, in part, for evolutionary-based reasons on the basis that if the theme of a slogan can be mapped onto one of four Darwinian modules, the universality of themes may have cross-cultural value. Using this approach, Table 1 lists a number of tourism destination slogans that map onto Saad’s Darwinian modules.

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Table 1.

Darwinian Modules and Tourism Destination Slogans.

Reproductive module

New York: I ♥ N Y (I Love New York)

Louisiana: Fall in love with Louisiana all over again

Virginia: Virginia is for lovers

Survival module

New Zealand: 100% pure New Zealand

Queensland: Beautiful one day, perfect the next

Kerala, India: God’s own country

Idaho: Great potatoes, tasty destinations

Kin selection module

Kansas: There’s no place like home

Mississippi: Feel’s like coming home

Reciprocation module

Australia: We can’t wait to say G’day

Indonesia: Just a smile away

Kentucky: It’s that friendly

Pennsylvania: You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania

South Carolina: Smiling faces, beautiful places

Slogans that work most successfully may assume the quality of a meme. For example, the I ♥ N Y slogan has successfully served to promote New York. The slogan conveys an idea, a belief, or an image of New York which has been transmitted globally. In recent years, there has been a flourish of tourism research directed at the influence of the media, most particularly movies and television, on tourism and destination choice behavior (Beeton 2005). Saad (2007) discusses the memetic transmission of cultural products such as television, movies, songs, music videos, literature, self-help books, religion, and art. He suggests that

in the same manner that fossilized and skeletal remains permit evolutionary-minded scholars to identify the phylogenetic trajectory of a given species, cultural products can serve as affective, conative, and cognitive “fossils” of Homo sapiens. Hence, by analyzing the contents of cultural forms and accordingly identifying key universal elements, evolutionary behavioral scientists have a direct window to our evolved human nature. (p. 168)

Dark and Deviant Tourism

The literature on dark tourism seems to have focused on death, disaster, and the macabre (Lennon and Foley 2000). A broader conceptualization might also encompass sex tourism, gambling, and other abnormal or deviant and antisocial behaviors by tourists. Recently, Uriely, Ram, and Malach-Pines (2011) examined the psychoanalytic sociology of deviant tourist behavior. Yet one is lead to ask whether genetic explanations provide a potentially deeper insight into psychoanalytic understandings of tourism behavior. Saad (2007) suggests that the seven “deadly sins are alluring and difficult to eradicate because their genesis lies deep in our Darwinian heritage” (p. 220). “Dark” and deviant behaviors are not uncommon. Therefore, such behaviors must represent evolved evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) that form part of the mix of all ESS. Although the evidence is clear that genes play a role in such behavior, this is not an argument in support of genetic determinism. Humans have the capacity to reason morally. But genes do play a role. As Dawkins (2006) powerfully argued, genes are anthropomorphically selfish. That is, they have the effect of behaving as though they were selfish. If this were not so, we would not be able to observe the results since unselfish genes would not survive the process of natural selection. Genes are neither “good” nor “bad” but they may produce “good” or “bad” effects from a moral perspective (Burnham and Phelan 2000). Providing they behave selfishly, the “goodness” of genes is irrelevant to their ability to survive and replicate. Thus, a Darwinian perspective can enhance our understanding of “dark” tourism and other forms of deviant tourism behavior.

Motivation

As the ultimate causal stimuli behind consumption, motives generate needs and wants. Schema, such as Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy, help to categorize motives but an evolutionary-based perspective can provide greater insight into how such motives function. For example, modern tourism primarily serves to satisfy Maslow’s higher-order needs of belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization. But from an evolutionary viewpoint, we might propose that the basis for such higher-order needs is to gain power and status within groups in order to gain a greater share of food or to attract mates.

Culture

Saad (2007) summarizes this research into four approaches, namely, emic-based research that seeks to describe idiosyncratic cultural phenomena, an etic-based approach that examines how cultural traits moderate consumption behavior, identification of non-Darwinian cross-cultural similarities and consumer universals, and generalization of cross-cultural models and frameworks. Culture-oriented consumer research in tourism could extend our understanding of consumption behavior in tourism by further exploring the implications of the theory of gene–culture coevolution. For example, there are significant cultural differences in the propensity for travel as well as preferred styles of tourism (e.g., differences in group vs. individual tourism preferences). Might there possibly be evolutionary explanations behind this observation?

Consumption Decision Making

This concerns how consumers acquire information, evaluate alternatives, and make choices. Traditionally, research assumes the model of rational “economic man” (“Homo economicus”) who seeks to maximize “utility.” Saad (2007, p. 31) suggests that “this cannot correspond with any notion of a sentient being that has evolved through natural selection.” Using evolutionary theory, Gigerenzer (2000) suggests that as humans have evolved having to make fast, frugal, and accurate decisions relying on instinct to survive and reproduce in the context of a disordered environment, cognitive processes have adapted heuristics that are ecologically rational. Tourists make a number of decisions before they arrive in a destination. Many decisions, however, are made once they have arrived at the destination. These decisions often occur in an unplanned, unfamiliar, perhaps chaotic, set of “happenstance” situations not dissimilar from the circumstance facing the hunter as he makes his way through foreign territory in search of prey.

Perception

This affects the way in which people process information. Perception is governed by receptivity, comprehension, attention, and learning. Perception occurs through the five human senses that have evolved to enable Dawkin’s “survival machines,” the human body, to serve the purpose of enabling genetic replication. Perceptual abilities are therefore very much a product of natural selection. Research on perception, at least in a consumer behavior context, has largely ignored Darwinian forces (Saad 2007). An evolutionary perspective may enable a deeper understanding of how perception functions in a tourism context with regard, for example, to the use of sexual images in tourism promotion, differences in the spatial, perceptual mechanisms used by male and female travelers as noted earlier, the ways in which people evaluate risk while traveling, the effect of smells and sights on response, the way in which tourists perceive and interact with service providers and hosts (such as the interpretation of facial expressions, verbal cues, body language, etc. as an indicator of anger, aggression, friendliness, subservience, helpfulness), particularly where cultural differences tend to confuse the perceiver.

Attitude Formation and Change

Attitudes and beliefs direct or bias consumer behaviors. For example, in a tourism context, cultural attitudes and beliefs play a significant role in shaping the types of destinations people wish to visit or avoid. As we have seen, since “the genes keep culture on a tight leash,” the development of culture, and therefore cultural attitudes, is inextricably linked to the process of biological or genetic evolution. Cultural attitudes also arise from man’s tribal origins and the influence of the group on survival (Vromen 2002). Tribal instincts suggest that there ought to be an attitudinal predisposition toward resisting or rejecting “other” cultures. Modern travel has enabled cultures to merge and new cultures to form, with cultural attitudes changing as a result. Interestingly, this process of cultural evolution and change occurs at the same time that the genes of the different cultural groups are mixing and evolving through intermarriage. As noted by Saad (2007, p. 45), “Darwinian-based attitudinal theories can complement one another in yielding a more complete and parsimonious meta-theory of attitudes.”

Emotions

Emotions, feelings, moods, and affective states influence behavior regardless of the setting. Consumer research typically distinguishes between decisions that are predominantly functional and cognitively based, and those that are more hedonic and emotionally charged. While functional-cognitive dominated decisions are seen to be more rational, calculated, and considered, in contrast, hedonic and emotionally dominated decisions are regarded as more instinctual, impulsive, and rapid. According to Wilson (1995),

Other correlations of wide significance are suggested by the evolutionary hypothesis. The less rational but more important the decision-making process, for example, the more emotion should be expended in conducting it. . . . We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution. (p. 68)

Emotional responses are the adapted solutions to problems of survival and reproduction (Nesse 1990; Cziko 2000). For example, love and jealousy play a key role in reproduction. Anger and fear enable organisms to respond quickly to aggression. Envy serves to fuel competition between individual organisms when competing for mates and food. Research has also demonstrated that optimism is affected by genes that are connected to serotonin ( The Economist 2009). Optimism is found to significantly affect one’s health and attitude toward life. It influences how people judge risk and rewards. One might hypothesize that optimists have a greater propensity to engage in tourism activity.

Personality

The particular defining qualities, traits, or characteristics of an individual that together paint a picture or profile of the way they think, feel, and behave is the focus of interest in much consumer research. Buss (1991) goes so far as to state that “personality theories inconsistent with evolutionary theory stand little chance of being correct” (p. 461). Figueredo et al. (2005) identify three major evolutionary theories of personality and summarize the empirical evidence that supports the role of personality in the evolutionary processes of natural sexual and frequency-dependent selection. Tourism research has given personality a prominent place as an explicator of consumption behavior. A couple of examples include sensation-seeking behavior (Zuckerman 1994) and destination image–personality congruency (Sirgy and Su 2000; Kastenholz 2004).

Shopping Behavior

When used as a means toward attracting a mate or enhancing one’s status, shopping behavior “helps propel the genes of the successful into future generations. . . . Similarly, the impulse for self-improvement that creates economic growth comes from the need to be more attractive to the opposite sex than your rivals” ( The Economist 2008b, p. 18). Shopping behavior, particularly in relation to brand choice, has been found to be used by consumers as a strategy to reinforce or enhance one’s self-image and/or social self-image (Dolich 1969; Martin and Bellizi 1982; Sirgy 1982). In addition, many consumption choices enable an individual to signal their membership to a particular group—“an imperative drive for countless social animals including Homo sapiens” (Saad 2007, p. 117). It has been argued that tourism consumption decisions, such as choice of destination, also serve to achieve this objective (Sirgy and Su 2000; Todd 2001).

Gift Giving

A related similar consumption behavior concerns gift giving. Gift giving serves to create and strengthen friendships and coalitions. Gift giving has been found, in part, to be correlated with genetic relatedness or kinship (Saad and Gill 2003). But the use of gifts also as part of a courtship ritual and as an alliance-building strategy is also evident (Cronk and Dunham 2003). While gift giving may be seen merely as a form of barter or trade, a true “gift” suggests the presence of some symbolic or abstract purpose above a purely functional objective. Tourists often purchase products as gifts to be given to family and friends upon their return home. From an evolutionary perspective, tourism gifts may serve other Darwinian adaptations such as a means of demonstrating one’s status as a successful individual who has the resources to tour and the capability to venture abroad and return home safely. Returning with a gift is closely analogous to the hunter who succeeds in navigating beyond territorial grounds in search of prey to return to the tribe with meat, animal skin, and trophies such as teeth, claws, or horns that display status and prowess.

Conspicuous Consumption

Evidence of the overt display of status through a person’s consumption behavior, which we refer to today by the term conspicuous consumption, probably began long ago. In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen (1899) was the first to use this term in referring to the consumption and leisure behavior of privileged classes. The Grand Tour (Trease 1991) by the English upper class and the ostentatious parties by French society during La Belle Epoque were examples of the conspicuous consumption identified by Veblen (1899) during that period. The Easterlin (1974) Paradox suggests that conspicuous consumption may therefore be an adaptation that enables a person to confirm his or her superior, relative position in relation to their social group. Saad (2007) notes that the Darwinian roots of conspicuous consumption “lie in the dual forces of sexual selection and Zahavian signaling . . . as exemplified by the peacock’s tail” (p. 85). Zahavi’s (1975) widely accepted theory is that the elaborate and wasteful peacock’s tail, although being a significant predation handicap, serves as a display of fitness that is difficult to imitate by “cheaters” who find it very difficult to fake such fitness. Saad (2007) contends that a strategy that involves such high cost is evolutionarily stable (ESS) when the winner gets to take all (Frank and Cook 1995; van Kempen 2003). The connection between conspicuous consumption and status was demonstrated empirically in a recent study by Ordabayeva and Chandon (2011), who found that “greater equality reduces consumption when consumers focus on the narrower possession gap, but it increases consumption when they focus on the greater position gains” (p. 27).

Risk-Related Behavior

There has been a significant body of tourism research in recent years that has addressed the issue of risk behavior (Pizam et al. 2004) and risk moderators, such as self-confidence (Valencia and Crouch 2008). Adventure tourism is characterized in part by the level of physical risk involved, and there are numerous examples of tourism activities that involve significant risk, such as the cases examined by Laing (2006) in her study of frontier tourists. The evidence (such as Schrader and Wann 1999; Shoham, Rose, and Kahle 2000) indisputably shows that males are much more likely than females to engage in risky physical behavior. The male association with risk has origins in his role as the hunter in hunter-gatherer society. Men also needed to be able to display courage and fearlessness in order to attract mates and in order to gain status. Displays of bravery by males have been ritualized through the various rites of passage traditions that are common across a number of cultures (Saad 2007). In addition to serving as a means of assessing one’s courage, rites of passage also formally confer the recognition of manhood in society and serve “to cement the ties of the young man to the adult group that accepts him” (Wilson 2000, p. 561).

The Role of Gender

This would seem to be one obvious place to start looking for evolutionary explanations of differences in travel behavior. We have seen already that the literature suggests that there may be an evolutionary basis to differences between male and female navigation and way-finding strategies. It would be interesting, for example, to learn whether males and females explore touristic spaces (e.g., cities, theme parks, museums) in rather different ways. Such information may have implications for architectural design and the way in which maps or circuits are depicted in tourism brochures.

There are also distinct gender differences in risk-related behavior. As these differences seem to be culturally universal, this would suggest that they are a product of nature rather than just nurture. Do males and females perceive and judge risks and consequences differently or do they instead respond differently to the same judgments?

Exploring Differences in Travel Propensity

We can observe an enormous range in the travel propensities of individuals. Some people simply never travel outside their normal living and working environment and have absolutely no desire to do so. Some people have an aversion for vacations. At the other extreme, there are some people who seek to undertake amazing feats of travel and tourism (Laing 2006; Laing and Crouch 2011) or who have no wish to settle down in one location or “home.” While a portion of this heterogeneity in the propensity to travel may be explained by economic, demographic, psychological, and cultural factors, it does beg the question whether some of this variability is also due to nature rather than nurture. In hunter-gatherer societies, the decision as to whether to move or stay must have been very critical to the survival prospects of those individuals, family groups, and tribes. As we saw in the earlier discussion concerning differences in innate levels of aggression, evolutionary theory suggests that, in any population, there would be an evolutionarily stable mix of different behavior strategies. It would therefore seem to be quite possible that this similarly critical stay-versus-go decision could also be embedded in the genetic development of Homo sapiens.

Travel Gene(s)?

This leads to the fundamental question of whether there are genes that influence travel propensity? If indeed travel propensity is shaped by the process of natural selection, this must somehow derive from a genetic predisposition. This does not mean necessarily that there is a gene or genes which determine travel propensity at birth. As was observed above, complex human traits may be influenced by the interaction of hundreds of genes and their environment. The field of epigenetics deals with the regulation of gene expression and repression (Lamb and Jablonka 2005). Organisms can carry particular genes, but the expression of those genes depends on environmental factors that influence how the epigenome tells “genes to switch on or off, to speak loudly or whisper” (Cloud 2010).

A potentially fruitful place to begin such research would be to further explore the influence of the polymorphisms of the DRD4 gene, which has been linked to political views (see above) as well as novelty- or sensation-seeking behavior (Cloninger, Svrakic, and Przybeck 1993; Kluger, Siegfried, and Ebstein 2002; Savitz and Ramesar 2004; Schinka, Letsch, and Crawford 2002). Settle et al. (2010) suggested that openness to experience, “a construct conceptually related to novelty seeking, is the personality trait most closely linked to political orientations” (p. 1191). On this basis, one could make a hypothesis that these same gene variants may predispose individuals to be more open to the experience of travel.

Environmental Attitudes and Tourism Behaviors

There is a growing body of tourism research that has sought to understand the environmental attitudes and behaviors of tourists (e.g., Dolnicar, Crouch, and Long 2008). The underlying purpose is to see whether tourists can be encouraged to act in a manner that is more environmentally sustainable or whether there exists a market segment of tourists who are innately more environmentally friendly. We saw above that there is evidence to suggest that human aesthetic attitudes toward the environment may have developed as an adapted response. If there is a heritable component to these aesthetic behaviors, one might expect to find genetic variations that explain some of the observed differences in environmental attitudes. Further, given the strong existing evidence of the heritability of political views and ideological dispositions discussed above, there would seem to be grounds for hypothesizing that tourist attitudes and behaviors related to the environment, and indeed to other issues such as cultural attitudes (e.g., behavior toward host communities or indigenous cultures, respect of local customs and taboos) are similarly influenced by genetics.

The Role of Status

As we saw above, status seems to play a critical role in the process of natural selection. Higher status individuals are able to exert power, influence the ownership of resources, display health and an ability to provide for family and kin, and attract mates. The question therefore arises, to what extent does the innate need for status influence travel behavior? Existing tourism-related research into the role of self-congruency theory emphasizes the notion that tourists are influenced in their choices by a need to somehow match their tourism consumption symbolically with their self-concept (i.e., self or social identities). This theory assumes that travelers, in part, strive to develop or enhance favorable identities of self. By comparison, the innate need for status does not necessarily imply favorable identities of self in order to achieve the role that status plays in natural selection. One might therefore hypothesize that the symbolic consumption of tourism is driven more by its demonstrative effects of superior status than by a need for self-congruity.