Mystery of the muse

by Diane Boudreau

Watch Elvis Presley shaking his hips or Mick Jagger strutting across a stage and you might easily imagine a peacock parading in front of a group of peahens. Either way, the display ends with pretty similar results. The jauntiest peacocks get to mate with multiple peahens. And rock stars? Well, they date supermodels.

Creativity is considered an attractive trait by both men and women. The results of a study by researchers at Arizona State University show that the reverse is also true–feelings of attraction inspire the imagination. People automatically become more creative when they have a romantic partner in mind.

History is filled with examples of brilliant artists inspired to greatness by an attractive muse. Vladas Griskevicius was curious about this link between creativity and attraction, and about why the muse business seems to be a mostly female occupation. Griskevicius is a doctoral student studying evolutionary psychology. He decided to examine possible evolutionary reasons for human creativity.

"People used to think that creativity solely helped us survive. For example, by helping us find better ways to spear a fish," he explains. However, many human displays of creativity that are highly valued in society have almost no survival value. A symphony could take years to write, but it won't help you catch a fish.

Not all evolved traits are selected just for survival benefits, however. Some traits are passed on not because they help a creature survive, but because they help him (or her) attract a mate. Sometimes, as in the case of a peacock's tail, these traits can even present a disadvantage in terms of survival. Growing a large tail takes calories away from more useful purposes, and the flashy plumage could attract predators.

What the tail does do is tell females, "I have good genes." Like a man in a shiny sports car, the peacock is advertising his wealth.

"To grow and maintain a resplendent tail you need to avoid parasites, avoid diseases, and obtain plenty of nutritious food. A nice tail indicates that your genes are well-tailored to survive in the world," says Griskevicius.

Is creativity in humans an advertisement to attract mates? Griskevicius, along with ASU psychology professors Robert Cialdini and Douglas Kenrick, decided to find out.

They recruited 615 college students and presented them with a variety of romantic prompts. Some subjects viewed photos of attractive members of the opposite sex. Others were asked to visualize themselves in a particular romantic scenario. The scenarios included a fling on the last day of a vacation, a first date with a potential long-term partner, and an existing relationship in which the partner had already demonstrated a measure of commitment and trustworthiness.

Creativity was evaluated in two different ways. For some of the tests, subjects were asked to write stories describing pictures before and after the imagined scenarios. Creativity was rated subjectively by a group of the subjects' peers. For other tests, creativity was measured using a standardized test known as the Remote Associates Test (RAT). All of the tests involved a control group.

In every possible situation, men showed an increase in creativity over the control group. Their creative juices flowed freely whether they were imagining a quick fling or a long-term committed relationship. The women, however, only showed a rise in creativity when imagining the ongoing relationship, even though they reported mood and arousal levels equal to the men's for all the scenarios.

The results support the notion of creativity as sexually selected. In many animals, like the peacock, grandiose mating displays are the domain of males. However, this gender division isn't universal. It depends on another division of labor–child-rearing. In some species, males donate sperm and nothing else to their progeny. These males tend to have the flashiest displays. In a few species, the males raise their young almost entirely. When this is the case, females do the wooing.

In humans, both males and females invest heavily in their offspring. But that division is more equal in long-term relationships. After a short fling, women end up bearing most of the reproductive burden.

"Evolutionary logic dictates that there would be one place women would want to display creativity–that was when the mate was truly suitable for a long-term relationship," says Cialdini, an ASU Regents Professor of psychology.

"You can imagine going on dates with someone," says Griskevicius. "On the first date, guys are throwing stuff out there, being creative, cracking jokes. The women aren't under much pressure to display that way. At some point, if a guy passes a woman's threshold and seems like good relationship material, she will turn on the creativity."

All these results made the researchers wonder if it was just the possibility of a reward–in this case a sexual or romantic relationship–that inspired the creativity. Would any kind of reward produce the same effect?

To find out, they conducted yet another test, with an important difference. Some of the subjects were told that if their RAT scores were in the top 30 percent, they would be entered in a raffle to win $60.

The subjects who were offered the chance to win money did slightly better on the test than the control subjects, but the subjects who imagined romantic scenarios still outperformed them all.

What's interesting about all of these results, say the researchers, is that the romantic scenarios were completely imaginary, but they still inspired creativity.

"The mechanism is not goal-directed in our experiments. There isn't really a woman there for the guy to impress. A photo spontaneously produces that increase in creativity," says Cialdini.

Griskevicius adds, "If you show a peacock a picture of a peahen he will raise his tail. Imagination stimulates the same part of the brain as the real thing."

So the next time you find yourself staring at a blinking cursor on a blank page, conjure up a muse. And if you're a woman, make sure that muse is someone who wants to stick around for the long haul.

"You don't need a real romantic interest to be inspired," says Griskevicius. "Just imagining someone can help."

Research on creativity and attraction was published in the July 2006 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. For more information, contact Robert Cialdini, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 480.965.3326. Send email to vladasg@asu.edu or robert.cialdini@asu.edu