GRUBY: Just as an aside, I have a BFA as my first degree and Psych is my dual major; I've been a professional artist by trade for 17 years and I have a pretty good understanding of the world, but the type of art is irrelevant in this study. The descriptions of each guy is an archetype, not an asessment of artistic merit. That said, your response is common one for men evaluating this study.
TMPGSTX: This experiment was a variation of a mate selection study performed at USC in 2000, but ours was approached differently as you'll see.
OK I wont keep you hanging any longer. This study was done to determine comparative priorities in women with regards to male 'creative intelligence' vs. 'provisioning ability' in female mate selection. I would've titled this thread as such, but I wanted to get some unbiased and impulse responses from some DJs here to see what the perceptions of these archetypes were from men and the reactions guys expected from women to these archetypes.
You'll notice that care was taken in these archetype descriptions to balance out the physical attractiveness of each man(i.e. both artists were considered equally attractive by peers and both businessmen were 'eligible' bachelors). What was at issue wasn't their comparative physiques, but what women chose in regard to these mens characteristics. The theory being that Creative Intelligence is of a higher mating value in the short term while a better Provisioning ability is more desirable in the long term. Also added was the caveat that legitimacy of provisioning ability and the potential for future provisioning in it's absence (i.e. the down on their luck men) played a factor in this mate selection.
So what exactly is “Creative Intelligence”? Although there is no firm consensus on how to define it, we often know it when we see it. We also know a bit about it from a century of creativity research. Within humans, creative intelligence is closely associated with the highly heritable general intelligence, and creative intelligence seems to rely on the generation, selective elaboration, and skillful implementation of ideas and strategies. The problem is that creativity sounds desirable, as does intelligence, so “creative intelligence” can become a vague term that seems useful for solving any behavioral problem, whether technological, ecological, social, sexual, or cultural. Many plausible adaptive functions explain the origins of human creative intelligence. These include: tool-making and tool-using, hunting, foraging, and food preparation methods, social strategizing within and between groups and sexual courtship dynamics (i.e. DJing).
Sorry for the psych lesson, but we had to be specific.
Most women face trade-offs in mating. In selecting a long-term mate, it makes sense for women to put greater weight on traits that advertise ability and willingness to invest in protection, provisioning, and care of the woman and her offspring. This will favor the evolution of ‘good dad’ indicators – reliable cues of paternal investment ability and willingness. This is a direct correlate to the Nice Guy we all know and despise. Some women of very high mate value (HB 8 and above) may have the luxury of attracting a long-term mate who has both good dad potential and good genes. Many women have to settle for a committed partner who is not ideal either paternally or genetically. Such women have incentives to secure better genes or better paternal care from short-term or extra-pair partners. Either would help at any time. This would explain the single mother looking for the good provider prevalent in our culture today.
The idea was that women will prefer a male possessing a higher capacity for Creative Intelligence in the short term sexual encounters to ensure the best possible future options for her offspring, while choosing a mate with better Provisioning ability for long term parental investment.
Art and business were chosen as two contrasting domains of work. Each requires distinct styles of creative intelligence, but both demand combinations of practical and theoretical skills, individual effort and social interaction. Hence, merit-based success in either domain may function as a mental fitness indicator. In each domain (art or business), one vignette described a man who showed high creative intelligence in his work, but who was poor due to bad luck and adverse circumstances. The other vignette in each set described a man who was average on creative intelligence, but who was wealthy due to good luck and beneficial circumstances. All vignettes made clear that each man’s creativity level was largely endogenous, reflecting natural (and presumably heritable) talent, but that his wealth level was largely accidental, gained through no merit or fault of his own.
Each woman completed two forced-choice questions: (1) “Based on these descriptions, who do you think you might find more desirable for a short-term sexual affair?”; (2) “Based on these descriptions, who do you think you might find more desirable for a long-term committed relationship?” (L or M in the artist vignettes, and R or J in the entrepreneur vignettes). Next, participants rated the desirability of each man as a short-term mate and as a long-term mate on two 9-point scales (where ‘1’ = not at all desirable, ‘5’ = average; ‘9’ = extremely desirable). The rating questions were as follows: “Overall, how desirable would you find L [M, R, or J] as a long-term partner?” “Overall, how desirable would you find L [M, R, or J] as a short-term partner?
In this study M was overwhelmingly chosen as the short term partner. 89% of the participants chose the naturally talented, but out of luck artist for a short term sexual encounter. 7% chose L the rich artist, 3% chose J the poor/talented businessman and 1% opted for R the wealthy/untalented businessman.
J was rated highest for long term relationship, but not as significantly as M in the short term. 67% of our subjects chose J, and surprisingly 17% chose L (rich artist). R was rated at 12% and M took 4% for the long term choice.
I'll give you all my conclusions a bit latter after you have some time to respond.
