26 June 2013 Last updated at 00:49 GMT , BBC

Viewpoint: Did our brains evolve to

foolishly follow celebrities?
Our obsession with celebrity culture is a result of our poorly adapted brains, argues social
anthropologist Jamie Tehrani.
I love a good quote.
One of my all-time favourite quotes comes from Mark Twain, who once wrote to his friend "I
am sorry for the length of this letter, but I did not have the time to write a short one".
It's an apology I have often repeated in bloated ramblings to my friends and colleagues, and
it's a wonderfully wry, pithy insight. Typical Twain, you might say.
Except that it's not. Because, as the person who recently pulled me up for using it told me, the
true author of the quote is in fact a less well-known French thinker, Blaise Pascal, who coined
it in a letter to a colleague in 1657. I looked it up and they were absolutely right.
And it turns out not to be the only quote I've been abusing.
I'm sure most of you are familiar with Einstein's brilliant refrain: "The definition of insanity
is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." It's probably the
most famous thing he said, apart from "E=mc2".
Only, there's no record of him every having uttered these words. The first time they appeared
in print was in 1981, in a Narcotics Anonymous pamphlet, some 25 years after the great man
died.
There are many, many similar examples.
Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin and Martin Luther King have probably said less than
half the things you've heard them quoted on. Because quotes are just so much more quotable
when they come from individuals who are famed for their wit and wisdom.
It's OK. Because misattributing quotes exemplifies our tendency to give too much credit to
celebrities.
Fame is a powerful cultural magnet. As a hyper-social species, we acquire the bulk of our
knowledge, ideas and skills by copying from others, rather than through individual trial-anderror. However, we pay far more attention to the habits and behaviours demonstrated by
famous people than those demonstrated by ordinary members of our community.
It follows that things are much more likely to catch on if they are associated with someone
who is well known for one reason or another - even if the association is erroneous, as in the
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case of those Twain and Einstein misquotations. This raises the question of whether what is
said is as important as who said it.
Another example of the way in which celebrities act as cultural magnets is that we frequently
copy traits that have little, if anything, to do with what made them successful in the first place
- like the clothes they wear, their hairstyles, or how they talk.
That's basically the reason that companies sponsor stars to use their products. Celebrities are
always on the TV and in the media, so of course getting them to wear your brand of jeans or
wristwatch is a great way to give them exposure.
But it's not just about getting your products in the public eye. You wouldn't know from
images on TV or in a newspaper or on a computer screen what kind of underpants David
Beckham wears, what coffee George Clooney drinks, or what perfume Beyonce smells of.
Companies get celebrities to advertise these kinds of products because they know that our
perceptions of value are actively influenced by fame. Celebrity endorsements not only make
products more visible, they make them more desirable.
So why is this? Celebrity culture is often portrayed as something relatively new, a product of
a media-saturated but socially atomised society.
Although I agree that the form of celebrity culture has no doubt been shaped by the modern
world, it is rooted in much more basic human instincts, which have played a key role in our
acquisition of culture and have been crucial to the evolutionary success of our species.
We might focus on the anthropology of prestige. Prestige is a form of social status that is
based on the respect and admiration of members of one's community. It is particularly
interesting for anthropologists because it seems to be a unique characteristic of our species,
and something that is universal to all human cultures.
In other primates, social hierarchies are typically based on dominance, which is different
from prestige because it implies fear, and the threat of violence.
Individuals defer to more dominant animals because if they fail to let them have what they
want then it would be perceived as a challenge to their status, which they will defend by
force. Many types of hierarchy in human society are similarly characterised by dominance.
However, unlike other primates, we also differentiate social status in terms of prestige. In
contrast to dominance, prestige is given voluntarily. It is freely conferred to individuals in
recognition of their achievements in a particular field, and is not backed up by force.
How did such systems arise? The most convincing theory suggests that prestige evolved as
part of a package of psychological adaptations for cultural learning. It allowed our ancestors
to recognise and reward individuals with superior skills and knowledge, and learn from them.
This allowed new discoveries and techniques - for instance, how to exploit the medicinal
properties of plants or optimise the design of hunting weapons - to spread across the whole
population, and enabled each successive generation to build on and improve the knowledge
of their predecessors.
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Although the bias for preferentially imitating prestigious individuals has generally helped
promote the spread of adaptive behaviours, anthropologists have suggested that it can make
us susceptible to copying traits that are of no use in themselves, or which may even be
harmful.
The reason for this is that prestige-biased learning is a very general strategy that is targeted at
successful role models, rather than specific traits. This is precisely what makes it such a
powerful and flexible tool - because the traits that make someone successful will vary
significantly in different environments, so it makes sense to copy whoever happens to be
doing best at a particular time and place.
However, because this strategy is somewhat indiscriminate, it can lead to people adopting all
kinds of behaviours exhibited by a role model, including ones that have nothing to do with
their success.
For example, men might observe a successful hunter perform some kind of incantation at the
same time as he re-touches his arrowheads, and adopt both the ritual as well as his knapping
techniques as a single package when they prepare their own tools.
This tendency, I believe, explains our interest in what sports stars and singers wear, what car
they drive, and where they go shopping.
In the past any useless traits we acquired as a result of prestige-biased learning were offset by
the benefits of picking up useful skills. So, in the long-run, it was an effective, adaptive
strategy.
However, I am far from convinced that our attraction to prestige continues to promote
superior cultural knowledge and skill.
The modern world is very different from the one in which our brains evolved, and I believe
that the originally adaptive bias for imitating successful people has today morphed into an
unhealthy obsession with celebrities, who we give far more attention to than they deserve.
Let me illustrate the point by way of an analogy to diet. We have an evolved preference for
sweet-tasting and fatty foods because they motivated our ancestors to seek out ripe fruits and
meat, which are rich in essential nutrients. But in today's world of mass-produced
confectionary and intensive agriculture, these previously adaptive tastes have led to a massive
obesity epidemic and all the health problems it's associated with.
Similarly, we can think of the mass-media as junk food for the mind. Quick. Convenient. But
not exactly nutritious. We gorge ourselves on images of wealth and success because they
appeal to our appetite for prestige. But are celebrities actually good role models?
In posing that question, I am not referring to well-publicised instances of bad behaviour by
over-sexed footballers or drunken soap stars. I am talking on a more general level about the
very purpose of celebrity itself.
In ancestral societies, the blueprint for a good role model was relatively well-defined - a good
hunter, or gatherer, or parent, maybe a ritual expert.

But in our society, with its complex class system, division of labour and melting pot of
cultures, the criteria for success are far more varied and opaque. Many celebrities have
accomplished their success in fields like sport and music, which most of us have little hope of
emulating.
But we still imitate what we can because our brains are programmed to associate prestige
with adaptive behaviour. And because fame is the primary cue of prestige, the more attention
celebrities get, the more they attract.
It's not surprising then, that fame has become an end in itself. Because in the modern world, it
does not really matter what you are famous for.
Indeed, while celebrities today get more attention and prestige than at any other point in
human history, we are frequently being told not to hold them up as role models.
But - seen from the evolutionary, anthropological perspective that I have sketched out - you
may ask, what are celebrities for if they are not to be role models?
Why give them the benefits of our prestige, if it is not reciprocated with anything that might
be of use to us?
In pondering those questions, we would do well to reflect on the words of Samuel Johnson:
"To get a name is one of the few things that cannot be bought. It is the free gift of mankind,
which must be deserved before it will be granted."
At least, I think that was Samuel Johnson.