How being perceived to be an artist boosts feelings of attraction in others.

ABSTRACT: Music production is a universal phenomenon reaching far back into our past. Given its ubiquity, evolution theorists have postulated adaptive functions for music, such as strengthening in-group cohesion, intimidating enemies, or promoting child bonding. Here, we focus on a longstanding Darwinian hypothesis, suggesting that music production evolved as a vehicle to display an individual's biological fitness in courtship competition, thus rendering musicality a sexually selected trait. We also extend this idea to visual artists. In our design, we employed different versions of naturalistic portraits that manipulated the presence or absence of visual cues suggesting that the person was an artist or a non-artist (e.g., farmer, teacher, physician). Participants rated each portrayed person's appea

SUBMITTER: Wassiliwizky E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10618184 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature