UK Psychologists Report on Exotic Animal Behavior: Status and Mating Amongst Visual Artists

A team of British psychologists have just published their findings concerning a much theorized, but little studied aspect of art world behavior: in their paper “Status and Mating Amongst Visual Artists,” Dr. Helen Clegg of the University of Northampton, UK, Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University, and Dorothy Miell of the University of Edinburgh conclude that “more successful male artists had more sexual partners than less successful artists but this did not hold for female artists” and that “the results provide partial support for the sexual selection hypothesis for the function of visual art.” Full text of the apparently legit research, which studied 236 heterosexual, mostly white (and presumably British) artists, here. The study was unable to  quantify the effect of quality of artistic production on mating success.