Geoffrey Miller took up one of Darwin’s thoughts
about evolution, that is the one about sexual selection working with natural
selection. Not that this is meant to imply anything un-natural about choosing a
mate, but we humans go about it differently from many other species. For
example, male Bower Birds set up a very elaborate decorative display to catch
the eye of a passing female.
Most of us guys, when in our prime anyway, don’t
have very elaborately decorated bowers at our disposal. Our bed, computer, TV
for football, and a fridge for our beer cover most of the essentials. All that
fancying up the place and moving furniture around comes later under strict
design guidance.
Now that doesn’t seem to cut it with Clegg, Nettle
and Miell who have their new analysis published in The Frontiers in Personality
Science and Individual Differences (1). They focused their attention on a group
of 236 visual artists. The base concept is that creative behaviors don’t fit
neatly into the survival mechanism as a useful adaption and therefore it must
have something to do with sex.
Their chosen artists were then grilled as to their
art, views and successes. Now relaxed and chatty, they were grilled about their
mating habits with details like the number of “one night stands" to the number
of longer term relationships. The age demographic was suitably large at 18 to
78 years old. 151 of the artists were women and 85 were men. Everyone was
heterosexual and 91% were of western-white ethnicity.
The estimation of artistic success was necessarily
complex as those selected ranged from hobbyists to established professionals.
Their mating success was easier to measure, with the number of partners fitting
onto a log scale covering 1 to 250. Note though that it was heavily skewed with
a mean around 11 over the last 5 years.
The conclusions? Well, the more successful the guys
were at art, the more successful they were with their mating. This didn’t work
for the women artists who were looking for longer relationships. Now the
strange observation: the successful male artists also were seeking long term
mates, but seemed to want to try more out before settling.
The good news for us run of the mill guys is that
they found that women preferred creative guys, even if poor, over richer
non-creative ones, but there is a rider – for short term mates only.
Note to self: replace old tubes of water colors
ASAP.
