Evolutionary explanations of celeb attraction
- Created by: hmarks62
- Created on: 11-02-15 11:54
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- Evolutionary explanations for the attraction of celebrity
- Creative Individuals
- Humans possess a love of novelty known as Neophilia
- Mate choice would favour creative courtship displays, explaining the development of artistic and musical talents in humans
- Females would demand ever more creative displays from potential partners
- Celebrities display these talents in abundance, so we are drawn to them. Miller (2000): although natural selection favours skills for survival, sexual selection might favour minds prone to creativity
- Celebrity gossip theory
- DeBacker (2005): Gossip creates bonds within social groups, and serves an adaptive function to social grooming by initiating and maintaining alliances
- Exchange of social info might have been adaptive when ancestors started living in larger groups to construct and maintain reputations and exchange info about potential mates
- Barkow (1992): Our minds are fooled into regarding celebs as members of our social network, thus celebs trigger the same gossip mechanisms that have evolved to keep up with ingroup members
- DeBacker (2005): Gossip creates bonds within social groups, and serves an adaptive function to social grooming by initiating and maintaining alliances
- circular argument: Suggesting a love of novelty arose because early females preferred creative behaviour tells us nothing about why they preferred it
- females also display creativity through art, music etc. From an evolutionary perspective this should not be prominent due to females selecting from the males - the creativity theory cannot explain this
- Shirashi et al (2006): discovered an enzyme correlated with novelty seeking tendencies. Genetic differences mean people produce different variations of the enzyme MAOA. One form is significantly associated with higher novelty seeking, suggesting neophilia (and therefore desire for creative people) has a genetic origin
- Creative Individuals
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