Kevin, thanks for your kind and helpful response. However, I guess what I meant to get at regarding sexual selection is that in ancient hunter/gatherer culture, which lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, females were able to select mates based on criteria they considered important, which may have included creativity, artistry, wit, etc as well as physical strength and hunting prowess (which probably was also had by those creative, artistic types). But with the advent of agriculture and development of masculine-dominated culture, women were no longer able to select who they wanted to mate with. Only in the last couple of hundred years has that become possible again.
Thanks for clarifying with such a thoughtful response, Michael. You're right to point out that the interaction of culture and evolved instincts is a sticky wicket in these conversations.
However, I don't think Matt is saying that only women value creativity. Our entire species evolved to enjoy things like art and wit. We pay attention to it, we reward it, and we seek it out. Matt simply suggests that sexual selection is the best explanation for why this trait evolved given the alternatives (natural selection).
Creativity itself may also be multi-adaptive — that is, it could indicate good genes, the ability to acquire resources, the ability to produce useful tools, and so on. Societies also tend to reward creative people with higher status and more resources.
From my reading, more research could be done in this area. However, if creativity indicates any (or all) of these adaptive traits, a father choosing his daughter's husband in a patriarchal society would still value it in the match. He wouldn't have escaped evolution's influence any more than the rest of us.
If higher intelligence, creativity, and aesthetic capability are elements of sexual selection, why is it that men with those qualities are often unmarried and have far fewer offspring than the common man?
I'll try my best to step in for Matt here, but to my understanding, he argues that capabilities like art, humor, and wit don't make sense as adaptations formed by natural selection. Their evolutionary benefits only make sense when it comes to mate choice / sexual selection.
What Matt doesn't mention is intelligence, which is a different beast. As a collection of related yet distinct mental capabilities (logic, critical thinking, planning, emotional intelligence, and so on), intelligence likely evolved through a combination of natural selection, sexual selection, and societal demands.
To answer your question more directly, research shows that intelligent men are actually more likely to get (and stay) married, and women value intelligence more than men when choosing partners.
However, you are correct that intelligent people have fewer children, but that may have more to do with society than evolution. In Western cultures, for instance, intelligent people are more likely to attain higher education, enter fields that require long training periods, and obtain jobs that are more demanding of one's time. All of these pursuits take years that might otherwise be dedicated to parenthood. (Though, I'm obviously ignoring personal choice and a host of other factors to keep an already long response relatively short.)
I hope that helps, and thanks for reaching out with your question, Michael.
Kevin, thanks for your kind and helpful response. However, I guess what I meant to get at regarding sexual selection is that in ancient hunter/gatherer culture, which lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, females were able to select mates based on criteria they considered important, which may have included creativity, artistry, wit, etc as well as physical strength and hunting prowess (which probably was also had by those creative, artistic types). But with the advent of agriculture and development of masculine-dominated culture, women were no longer able to select who they wanted to mate with. Only in the last couple of hundred years has that become possible again.
Thanks for clarifying with such a thoughtful response, Michael. You're right to point out that the interaction of culture and evolved instincts is a sticky wicket in these conversations.
However, I don't think Matt is saying that only women value creativity. Our entire species evolved to enjoy things like art and wit. We pay attention to it, we reward it, and we seek it out. Matt simply suggests that sexual selection is the best explanation for why this trait evolved given the alternatives (natural selection).
Creativity itself may also be multi-adaptive — that is, it could indicate good genes, the ability to acquire resources, the ability to produce useful tools, and so on. Societies also tend to reward creative people with higher status and more resources.
From my reading, more research could be done in this area. However, if creativity indicates any (or all) of these adaptive traits, a father choosing his daughter's husband in a patriarchal society would still value it in the match. He wouldn't have escaped evolution's influence any more than the rest of us.
Matt has a chapter where he explores this in more depth in his book, and we ran a preview of it here if you're interested: https://substack.com/home/post/p-161482729
Thanks again for reading with us!
- Kevin Dickinson
Big Think Books Editor
If higher intelligence, creativity, and aesthetic capability are elements of sexual selection, why is it that men with those qualities are often unmarried and have far fewer offspring than the common man?
I'll try my best to step in for Matt here, but to my understanding, he argues that capabilities like art, humor, and wit don't make sense as adaptations formed by natural selection. Their evolutionary benefits only make sense when it comes to mate choice / sexual selection.
What Matt doesn't mention is intelligence, which is a different beast. As a collection of related yet distinct mental capabilities (logic, critical thinking, planning, emotional intelligence, and so on), intelligence likely evolved through a combination of natural selection, sexual selection, and societal demands.
To answer your question more directly, research shows that intelligent men are actually more likely to get (and stay) married, and women value intelligence more than men when choosing partners.
However, you are correct that intelligent people have fewer children, but that may have more to do with society than evolution. In Western cultures, for instance, intelligent people are more likely to attain higher education, enter fields that require long training periods, and obtain jobs that are more demanding of one's time. All of these pursuits take years that might otherwise be dedicated to parenthood. (Though, I'm obviously ignoring personal choice and a host of other factors to keep an already long response relatively short.)
I hope that helps, and thanks for reaching out with your question, Michael.
- Kevin Dickinson
Big Think Books Editor