Abstract
Darwin explored the evolutionary processes underlying artistic propensities in humans. He stressed the universality of the human mind by pointing to the shared pleasure which all populations take in dancing, engaging in music, acting, painting, tattooing, and self-decorating. Artistic motivation drives/reinforces individuals to engage in aesthetically oriented activities. As curiosity/play, artistic behavior is hypothesized as a functionally autonomous activity motivated intrinsically through an evolved, specific, and stable aesthetic motivational system. The author tested whether artistic motivation is rather intrinsically sourced, domain-specific, and temporally stable using a large decades-long real-life public Brazilian database of university applications. In Study I, the author analyzed reasons for career-choice responded to by 403,832 late-adolescent applicants (48.84% women), between 1987 and 1998. In Study II, the author analyzed another career-choice reason question responded to by 1,703,916 late-adolescent applicants (51.02% women), between 1987 and 2020. Music, Dance, Scenic Arts, Visual Arts, and Literary Studies, in combination, presented a higher percentage of individuals reporting intrinsic factors (e.g., personal taste/aptitude/fulfillment) and the lower proportion reporting extrinsic motives (e.g., the influence of media/teacher/family, salary, social contribution/prestige) than other career groups. If artistic motivation were a recent by-product of general curiosity or status-seeking, artistic and non-artistic careers would not differ. Overall, intrinsic motives were 2.60–6.35 times higher than extrinsic factors; among artistic applicants’ were 10.81–28.38 times higher, suggesting domain-specificity. Intrinsic motivation did not differ among artistic careers and remained stable throughout the periods. Converging results corroborated a specific, stable, and intrinsically sourced artistic motivation consistent with its possible evolutionary origins.
Highlights
In Darwin’s currently sesquicentennial book “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex” (1871), he expands his theorization about human origins and common descent, and addresses the evolution of many psychobehavioral tendencies of our species (Campbell, 1972; Richerson et al, 2021)
The author further created a ratio between the classes of motives by dividing the averaged intrinsic percentages by the averaged extrinsic percentages (i.e., In/Ex). This ratio indicates how many times intrinsic motives are higher than extrinsic motives, it creates a composite measure for an overall motivational profile, it enables group comparisons of the motivational profile, and it enables an integrated discussion of both intrinsic and extrinsic motives
The author tested whether artistic motivation as reflected from the reasons to apply for university artistic courses is intrinsic, domain-specific, and temporally stable in two studies using each different question of a large decades-long real-life public Brazilian database from university entrance applications
Summary
In Darwin’s currently sesquicentennial book “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex” (1871), he expands his theorization about human origins and common descent, and addresses the evolution of many psychobehavioral tendencies of our species (Campbell, 1972; Richerson et al, 2021). The evolution of our artistic propensities was an important part of the book (Menninghaus, 2019). A growing body of literature considers artistic tendencies as part of human natural endowment, focusing on aesthetics (Voland and Grammer, 2003; Chatterjee, 2013), music, and dance (Wallin et al, 2000; Mithen, 2005; Ball, 2010; Bannan, 2012; Honing, 2018), literature and poetry (Carroll, 1995; Gottschall and Wilson, 2005; Boyd, 2009; Gottschall, 2012), visual arts (Coe, 2003), and arts in general (Dissanayake, 1988, 1992, 2000; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Martindale et al, 2007; Dutton, 2009; Davies, 2012; Sütterlin et al, 2014; Hogh-Olesen, 2018; Menninghaus, 2019; Richards, 2019). To move beyond eventual “just-so stories” (Varella et al, 2013) and anecdotal evidence (Varella et al, 2017) on both sides, more high-quality empirical studies are still needed to tell apart adaptive and non-adaptive hypotheses about artistic propensities (cf. Andrews et al, 2002; Varella et al, 2012)
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