Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life (20 page)

Along with Bob Cialdini and I, Vlad Griskevicius set out to reproduce the “muse effect” in the laboratory. We reckoned that creativity in human males, like feather displays in male birds, might be
linked to sexual selection and might be triggered by reproductive motivation. In birds, sexual motivation is limited to the springtime mating season, but in humans, mating urges are less seasonal and can be triggered by awareness of an available and attractive member of the opposite sex.

In one experiment, we brought college students into the laboratory and asked them to write a short story about an ambiguous picture—such as a colorful abstract painting or a cartoon drawing of two men chatting at an outdoor café. Before writing their story, half of them were put into a mating frame of mind by viewing six photos of highly attractive members of the opposite sex and then choosing the one they would most desire as a romantic partner. After they made their choice, we left the photo of their selected romantic partner on the screen and told them to imagine what they would do on an ideal first date with this person. The other half of the subjects were in the control condition; they just saw a photo of a street with several buildings and were asked to write about the most pleasant weather conditions for walking around and looking at the buildings.

The students' stories varied greatly in their creativity. For example, for the café cartoon, one guy said, “These two people work together and are on a break from work at a coffee shop.”

Another more creative type said:

In describing one of the abstract paintings, another student wrote:

After we collected the stories, we showed them to other students, who rated each story on the extent to which it was creative, original, clever, imaginative, captivating, funny, entertaining, and charming. When we analyzed the results, we found that mating motivation had absolutely no effect on women's creativity. But the mating prime really got the men's creative juices flowing. Although the men in the control condition were slightly less creative than the women, the guys thinking about mating were positively inspired. It was not that the mating-motivated men wrote more, but that what they wrote was judged more clever, imaginative, and original. In another study, we found that men thinking about mates also racked up higher scores on standard tests of creativity, such as finding remote associations to words or devising new uses for familiar objects.

So these studies established that temporary activation of a mating motive can have the same effect on humans as the mating season has on peafowl; in both cases, mating opportunities inspire males to strut their stuff.

One of the characteristics of great artists like Picasso is that they are constantly trying to break with tradition, striving not merely to paint
or write well but to paint or write in some radically new way. Rivera and Neruda broke traditions not only in their art and poetry but also in their politics. As it turns out, rebellious thinkers are often quite attractive to women, even when they are not artistically inclined, as was the case with Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Of course, the key is not simply to say things that sound crazy but to offer new ideas, preferably ones that will improve society. After growing up in a wealthy family and completing medical school, Che Guevara took a trip around South America. He was so offended at all the poverty and oppression he saw that he decided to dedicate himself to fighting injustice and promoting equality (whether or not one agrees with his politics of communist revolution or with his behavior after he came to power in Cuba, it is important to appreciate that Che did not start out looking for trouble and change for its own sake; he had a higher goal).

Chad Mortensen and Noah Goldstein joined us to study the effects of romantic motivations on nonconformity. We reckoned that nonconformity is another tactic that men can use to stand out from the crowd and attract mates. But as in the case of political rebellion, we reasoned that mating motivation would not simply inspire men to disagree with others in random or senseless ways. Instead, we expected it would lead them to disagree with others in ways that would make them appear to be uniquely discriminating—to manifest the qualities of a good leader rather than those of either a docile follower or an angry rebel without a cause.

To measure people's inclinations to stand against or go along with group opinions, we created an experimental situation reminiscent of Solomon Asch's classic line-judging study, in which a subject had to give his judgment on the comparative lengths of lines after hearing five other people say that a longer line was actually shorter. In our study, subjects were asked to judge how interesting they found an artistic image. But before they could register their opinion, they first
got to see the judgments of several other members of their group (who tended to agree with one another that the image was either rather uninteresting or quite interesting). Did the subject go along with the group judgment or stand alone? The answer depended on whether said subject was a he or a she, and also on his or her motivational state.

Some of the subjects were feeling fearful, after having imagined a scenario in which they were alone in a house late at night. If you were in this condition, you would imagine lying in bed in the dark and recalling a news story about several unsolved murders in your neighborhood, then hearing strange noises outside, followed by sounds of someone entering the house. After calling out and receiving no reply, you try to use your phone and realize the line is dead. As the story ends, you hear strange cackling laughter, and then see the shadow of an intruder entering your bedroom.

Other participants were put into a mating motivation. If you were in this condition, you would imagine being on vacation and meeting the person of your dreams. After spending a romantic day together, during which you become increasingly infatuated with one another, the scenario ends as you kiss passionately on a moonlit beach.

If you were in the control condition, you would imagine finding some lost concert tickets just in time to go to a show with a friend.

As we had predicted, fear led both men and women to conform more to the group's opinion. (This result fits with numerous findings that animals and humans pull together under threat.) But romantic motives had different effects on men and women. Romantic mood, like fear, boosted women's conformity. But for men, a romantic mood inspired them to stand against the group's opinion. Furthermore, they did so in a very strategic way. Romantically motivated men only went against the group opinion when doing so could make them look good, by expressing a uniquely positive opinion when the group had been negative (Ah, but I disagree; I can see the beauty in that). And in a
later study, we found that romance inspired men to go against a group only on subjective judgments, for which there is no objective right or wrong answer (Do you prefer paintings by Vincent van Gogh or Claude Monet?). When there was a clearly correct answer, and they could be proved wrong (Is it more expensive to live in New York or San Francisco?), men went along with the consensus.

So again, we see that mating motives inspire men to show off in another way: By selectively demonstrating their independence from group opinion, particularly when they can do so in ways that make them look uniquely good rather than oddly different.

So men respond to romantic motives by showing off: by spending money in more conspicuous ways, by acting like heroes, by standing firm against group opinion in ways that could make them look good, and by strutting their artistic creativity. What is important is not simply that men are show-offs but that they flash their feathers in especially ostentatious ways when they are in a mating frame of mind. Is it just a coincidence that human male showiness responds to mating motives in the way that males in other species respond to the mating season? Perhaps, but it seems unlikely. Remember, women prefer to mate with men who stand out from the crowd. Thus the payoff is the same for male humans as it is for peacocks and bighorn sheep, and it is the payoff that drives natural selection at all levels—an increase in attractiveness to the more discriminating sex, who will be disinclined to mate with a male who does not demonstrate his worth. And for men, as for males of other species, showing off is expensive. Conspicuous consumption is literally paying money to get noticed. Dedicating years to becoming a creative artist, as Picasso and Rivera did, can involve periods without food on the table. And it is often the tallest grass that gets cut first. Standing against group opinion, even
in noble and positive ways, can result in harassment, imprisonment, and even death. (Martin Luther King Jr., like Che Guevara, lived fast and died young, but both, like Picasso and Rivera, were highly attractive to women.)

Why don't women respond to mating motives in the same way that men do? In several studies, we tried to find a condition in which a woman would be more creative after thinking about romance. It only worked in one special case: when the women were thinking about a long-term relationship with a man whom they had been dating for a while and who had impressed their friends and relatives as a good catch. Then and only then would a woman show off her creative side. In this regard, consider one example of a female being inspired to creative brilliance by romance. During her twenties, Elizabeth Barrett Browning had not yet hit her stride as a poet. But then she received a fan letter from Robert Browning, who professed to be in love with her. It took a year, and many more letters, for Robert to convince Elizabeth of the sincerity of his intentions, at which point she agreed to elope with him. It was at this time that Elizabeth was inspired to write
Sonnets from the Portuguese
, regarded by critics as her best creative work.

Because human males often invest in their offspring, they also exercise choice in picking females as mates, at least for long-term relationships. But even then, men and women choose one another based on different criteria, as I discussed in Chapter 2. Women contribute more directly to caring for the offspring, donating their own bodily resources, and hence many of women's flashy purchases are designed to make them appear physically attractive and healthy. And as I mentioned in describing our conspicuous consumption studies, women did respond to thoughts about mating by showing off their nurturant
qualities—increasing their desire to take care of others. By displaying their nurturance, women demonstrate a trait likely to be valued in a mother.

The links among such broadly different forms of display—between birds strutting their brilliant feathers and humans displaying artistic genius, nonconformity, heroism, and conspicuous cash-flashing—highlight the profound interconnectedness of nature. They show how broad abstract principles derived by biologists studying animals in the jungle weave together with economics, politics, and even poetry. Freud was onto something when he attributed mankind's great accomplishments to the sublimation of sexual urges, but because he was working without these new broad principles, he missed the central point. As we emphasized in Chapter 8, reproduction ain't just about having sex. The noble and brilliantly creative things human beings accomplish are not simply sex drives gone astray; they are elaborate forms of foreplay, intimately tied to the processes by which our ancestors chose which genes were going to make it into future generations.

These findings also highlight that there are many roads to reproductive success, not all best traveled in a Porsche Carrera. If your kid wants to become an artist, it could ultimately make him more attractive than buying an expensive car when he finishes medical school. And you certainly should not think of creative play as mere distraction; we are wired up to deeply appreciate it and to respond favorably to those who are especially good at it.

There is another reason why you should not feel bad if your son is not driving a Porsche Carrera. Very rich and flashy guys do in fact get more action than guys in Hyundais, but studies by Jill Sundie and her colleagues suggest that people associate extreme extravagance with short-term mating strategies. It is those men who are inclined to be
playboy types rather than the stay-at-home dads who are most motivated to show off their extravagance to the opposite sex. And women understand this. They view men who buy flashy expensive cars as onenight-stand types. In some related research, we explored the relationship between income and desirability as a marriage partner. We found that most of the difference in desirability shows up between poverty and a lower-middle-class income. Once a guy brings in a middle-class income, he is almost as attractive a marriage prospect as a very wealthy man, and he is probably more likely to come home at night and help take care of the kids.