Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-bvgqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T13:58:47.149Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why is creativity attractive in a potential mate?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2008

Daniel Nettle
Daniel Nettle
Affiliation:
Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, Newcastle University, Newcastle NE2 4HH, United Kingdom. Daniel.nettle@ncl.ac.ukwww.danielnettle.info
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A number of studies suggest that women find artistically creative men attractive, especially in the short-term mating context. Artistic creativity (but not mathematical or technical creativity) is linked to psychosis-proneness. I hypothesise that in preferring artistically creative men, women may be choosing paternal genotypes that make babies that are not excessively somatically demanding on them.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , June 2008 , pp. 275 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Baron-Cohen, S., Bolton, P., Wheelwright, S., Scahill, V., Short, L., Mead, G. & Smith, A. (1998) Autism occurs more often in families of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians. Autism 2:296–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clegg, H. (2006) Creativity: Psychological and evolutionary perspectives. Doctoral thesis. The Open University.Google Scholar
Griskevicius, V., Cialdini, R. B. & Kenrick, D. T. (2006) Peacocks, Picasso, and parental investment: The effects of romantic motives on creativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91:63–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haselton, M. G. & Miller, G. F. (2006) Women's fertility across the cycle increases the short-term attractiveness of creative intelligence. Human Nature 17:50–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, G. F. (2000) Sexual selection for indicators of intelligence. In: The nature of intelligence, ed. Bock, G., Goode, J. & Webb, K., pp. 260–75. Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nettle, D. (2006) Schizotypy and mental health amongst poets, visual artists, and mathematicians. Journal of Research in Personality 40:876–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nettle, D. & Clegg, H. (2006) Schizotypy, creativity and mating success in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B, Biological Sciences 273:611–15.Google ScholarPubMed
Nettle, D. & Clegg, H. (2007) Personality, mating strategies and mating intelligence. In: Mating intelligence: Sex, relationships and the mind's reproductive system, ed. Geher, G. & Miller, G. F., pp. 121–34. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Prokosch, M., Yeo, R. & Miller, G. F. (2005) Intelligence tests with higher g-loadings show higher correlations with body symmetry: Evidence for a general fitness factor mediated by developmental stability. Intelligence 33:203–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Health Organisation (2007) World Health Organisation Core Health Indicators Database. Available at: http://www.who.int/whosis/database/core/core_select.cfm.Google Scholar