Original Article
Musical improvisation skill in a prospective partner is associated with mate value and preferences, consistent with sexual selection and parental investment theory: Implications for the origin of music

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.10.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Music is a human universal, which suggests a biological adaptation. Several evolutionary explanations have been proposed, covering the entire spectrum of natural, sexual, and group selection. Here we consider the hypothesis that musical behaviour constitutes a reliable or even costly signal of fitness, and thus may have evolved as a human trait through sexual selection. We experimentally tested how musical performance quality (MPQ), in improvisations on the drums, saxophone, and violin, affects mate values and mate preferences perceived by a prospective partner. Swedish student participants (27 of each sex) saw a face of a person of the opposite sex and heard a piece of improvised music being played. The music occurred in three levels of MPQ and the faces in three levels of facial attractiveness (FA). For each parametric combination of MPG and FA, the participants rated four mate value scales (intelligence, health, social status, and parenting skill) and four mate preference scales (date, intercourse, and short- and long term relationship). Consistent with sexual selection theory, mate value ratings were generally increased by MPQ for raters of both sexes. Consistent with more specific hypotheses that follow from combining sexual selection and parental investment theory, women’s but not men’s preference for a long-term, but not short-term, relationship was significantly increased by MPQ, MPQ generally affected women’s ratings more than men’s, FA generally affected men’s ratings more than women’s, and women’s ratings of intelligence were even more influenced by MPQ than by FA.

Section snippets

Design

To test these predictions, the experiment needs to measure participants’ evaluations of possible opposite-sex partners as a function of their sex, facial attractiveness, and music performance quality in a factorial design. The two continuous independent variables were varied parametrically in three levels to maintain a minimum number of conditions, which yields a 2 sex × 3 musical performance quality (MPQ) × 3 facial attractiveness (FA) design. Possible effects of individual listener

Results

The background data and the descriptive statistics of the experiment are first presented. Next are the effects tested statistically, with particular focus on the critical predictions, and the effects are finally summarised in multiple regression models.

Discussion

We addressed the hypothesis that human music might have evolved through sexual selection in an experiment testing predictions based on fitness signalling and parental investment theory. All four incrementally specific hypotheses were supported by the results, with some exceptions from the overall patterns of the two more general hypotheses: (a) Males’ ratings exhibited neither a consistent trend or a statistically significant effect of MPQ upon Health and Parenting Skill, which (b) was also the

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Geoffrey Miller and an anonymous reviewer for careful and detailed comments that helped us to substantially improve the paper. We also thank Christoph Braun, Martin Gründl, Claus Marberger, Christoph Scherber, and all others involved in BeautyCheck for letting us use their excellent images of faces.

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      And occasionally, purely due to vagaries of chance, randomization may turn out to be a poor substitute for counterbalancing and proceed to create serious confounds in the data (Bressan, 2019). In still other studies the order was fixed and this was stated clearly: long-term came first in one case (Li et al., 2013), short-term came first in all the others (Jauk et al., 2016; Lindová et al., 2016; Madison, Holmquist, & Vestin, 2018; Place, Todd, Penke, & Asendorpf, 2010; Puts, 2005; Roney, Hanson, Durante, & Maestripieri, 2006; Tornquist & Chiappe, 2015; Varangis, Lanzieri, Hildebrandt, & Feldman, 2012). More often, presentation order was not specified explicitly and could, at best, be inferred from formulations such as “participants rated how attractive they found the person as a long-term mate and as a short-term mate”.

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    Part of this work was supported by a grant to the first author from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (P2008:0887).

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