Creative Productivity and Marriage Markets: Mating Effort and Career Striving as Rival Hypotheses

Nigel Barber
Independent Scholar

Creative products may enhance sexual attractiveness of creators. Alternatively, they may enhance career success. These rival perspectives offer competing predictions concerning marriage markets and creativity. When marriage markets favor women, there is less direct mating effort but more career striving to attract brides. Regression analysis of the 49 largest United States metropolitan areas found that in areas having a good supply of single men, creativity increased with metropolitan area size controlled. A second study confirmed this pattern with the proportion of creative professionals as the dependent variable. A third study replicated the pattern worldwide for patents in urbanized mega-regions. A fourth cross-national study of books published replicated the marriage-market effect but found creativity unrelated to masculine desire for casual sex (sociosexuality). A fifth study produced similar results for patent creativity. Results favored career striving over the mating effort hypothesis.

Barber, N. (2017). Creative productivity and marriage markets: Mating effort and career striving as rival hypotheses. Journal of Genius and Eminence, 2(1), 32-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.18536/jge.2017.04.02.01.04