Artistic and sports skills influence sexual selection, study shows

People with artistic and sports skills have a slight advantage in competing for partners of the opposite sex and in competition with people of the same sex, indicates a survey by scientists from Brazil, the Czech Republic and Canada.

The data, which were obtained from those who practice athletic and artistic activities in a non-professional way, give more weight to the idea that art and sport arose, in part, thanks to so-called sexual selection. It is one of the most important mechanisms in the evolution of living beings, originally proposed by the British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

The findings were published in a recent issue of the specialized journal Frontiers in Psychology. Among the authors of the research is the couple formed by the Czech Jaroslava Varella Valentova and the Brazilian Marco Antonio Correa Varella, both linked to the Department of Experimental Psychology at USP, where Valentova is a professor and Varella is a postdoctoral researcher and visiting professor.

For the study, the team recruited a total of 852 volunteers of both sexes, of whom 248 were Brazilian and the rest were from the Czech Republic. The average age of the participants was around 27, and those included in the research were all heterosexual – this is because other studies had shown that the processes linked to sexual selection are different in people who are attracted to same-sex partners.

As Varella explains, it is common to divide the functioning of sexual selection into two aspects: “ornaments” and “armaments”. The first pillar is well known to every person who has ever seen a peacock. The very striking features of the members of one of the sexes (often the male, although there are many exceptions) serve as a sign that the individual is strong and healthy, as his organism is capable of “investing” in flamboyant ornamentation. Therefore, he would be an excellent partner.

The “weapons” are, for example, the horns of mountain sheep or marsh deer, or the muscle mass of male gorillas and elephant seals. They function as a mechanism to establish a hierarchy (based on exhibition or physical disputes) between members of one sex, which, in turn, gives them greater access to partners of the other sex.

“It is expected that there will be a stronger relationship between the forms of sexual selection and the abilities of artists and professional athletes. This is because they not only reach higher levels of proficiency and performance, which increases the effect of ‘ornament’ and ‘armament’ ‘ of their abilities, but also because they take advantage of fame and exposure as public figures”, says the USP researcher.

However, the researchers’ bet was that the abilities of normal people also have an impact in this area. To do this, they used a questionnaire designed to measure indirect indicators of sexual selection — for example, the number of partners a person has had, how easy they are to flirt, how competitive they are with people of the same sex, etc. Then they cross-referenced that data with questions about people’s abilities in a range of artistic activities —creative writing, drawing, singing, playing an instrument, etc.—and sports skills.

The statistical analysis of this mass of data indicates that, in the case of women, artistic activities seem to function as both “ornament” and “armament”, while among men the clearest associations are between art and “armaments”.

In the case of sports, both aspects are present among men, while the “weapons” side predominates among women.

“The dual function of ornament and weaponry for both types of capabilities is unprecedented,” says Varella. He also highlights that the new studies corroborate others that show a greater role for sports skills in the case of men and, on the artistic side, a greater role for singing and dancing in the case of women and the performance of musical instruments in the case of men.