Evolutionary Psychology explanation for pointless creativity?

Hi,
I was wondering what the best Evolutionary Psychology explanations are for why people might want to start drawing things - or painting their skin for cultural reasons - or draw patterns, make necklaces, and do other pointless creative things… and why many people enjoy art?
I’m using that no kind of soul is involved… rather that these desires and emotions came from our evolutionary development for some reason…
Thanks…

I don’t know about any evolutionary impetus… but I think the key is noting that art for it’s own sake is a comparatively new idea (how new? I’d argue that’s up for debate).

All of the things the OP mentions are hardly pointless. Or, at the very least, they were not perceived to be pointless. An intelligent species that can use tools, and in most ways is at the mercy of nature, will soon be looking for totems that control it. At first natural artifacts, but the idea that rocks and cave wall formations can be improved with blood and other pigments would not be long in coming.

The more invested the people were in these totems, amulets, and tribal rhythms, the better (is it that unreasonable to think back then?) the magic.

Evolution playing a role? If the ability to use painting, tattooing, music, language, and other “magic” were to create a distinction between people… Those who can represent the world, explain it (in however crude a way), and assume some belief in control over it get at the very least a social advantage that would not have existed before the cave walls were painted. Just a guess. And perhaps a flimsy one at that.

Is there a clear distinction between ‘pointless’ creativity and ‘useful’ creativity? (I mean is there a way of predicting what will be useful until you have tried it?)

Well as a psych instructor I’ll give my very best answer!!

Cognitively, when humans were evolving as a primate with a very large brain, we needed things besides hunting and gathering to keep our brains busy. There is a long debate over the evolution of our brain, and why humans are so damn creative. Dr.Paul Marshall a renown evolutionary philosopher sermised that our creativity came from three distinct drives. Impressing ones peoples, taking up time - ala cure for boredom - and growing ones imagination.
The last one may seem odd, I mean cave men had no clue what an imagination was right? Well they didn’t need to know, but the more things they drew in the mud, on cave walls and the more flowers they crushed for different colors, the more they learned how to try new things. The more they tried new things, the more pathways they naturally grew in their brains.
Those who put 2 and 2 together and saw that seeds made sprouted plants started using a fledgeling imagination for sowing their own seeds. Not having to move about to gather what they needed, they could grow it right there… This of course took millennia but they did it right? They used their imaginations, we are staring at a screen right now…

I’ve got to agree. There’s nothing pointless about creativity. It may not seem as essential for survival as, say, food preparation, but it’s served a great variety of purposes. Playing music might count as “pointless,” but many will agree it’s a great way to get chicks - which might qualify as an evolutionary purpose, might it not? :wink: :wink: :wink:

In the book Why Things Are, Volume II: The Big Picture, Joel Achenbach discusses why we have such a variety of sexual variations/perversions. After all, with evolutionary pressure, shouldn’t we all be fantisizing about straight, traditional sexual intercourse?

The answer he came up with is the conjecture that our linguistic brain evolved to be very creative, and the sexual creativity is due to this. Not selected for in its own right, but just a side effect.

I’d think that the lifestyle of our cave dwelling predecessors would have encouraged creative pursuits. Think about it. They’ve got a good four or five month summer in which they must hunt, gather, preserve, and store enough food to last them through the winter season. Then they’ve got a long stretch of short, cold days with nothing to do other than sit around and live off of their stores. Storytelling, painting, jewelry-making (which could have also served as trade goods once inter-tribal trade developed), and music would have given them something interesting to simply fill the time. Perhaps more importantly, it also helped them relay their oral histories as well as, through shared experience, create a sense of cohesiveness that was essential to the survival of the group as a whole.

Thanks for your replies… I used the word “pointless” because I wanted to talk about the kind of creativity that doesn’t have an obvious survival advantage. I mean creativity leading to making weapons or shelter would have a survival advantage.

I’m talking about making jewelry, or patterns on clothing or skin or cave walls, or making and playing musical instruments, etc… I guess boredom could be used to explain this… I think we crave some “newness” to varying degrees - and this motivates experimentation, exploration and taking risks… this would sometimes have survival benefits (e.g. it could lead to better weapons or agriculture, etc) but often it wouldn’t have much of a survival benefit except to help relieve the boredom of others.

Here’s the thing. Our large brains evolved to help us figure out how to survive, right? We evolved to be flexible, to figure things out, to try new things. Well, how exactly can natural selection differentiate between those new ideas that are going to be usefull and those that aren’t? And how can natural selection keep your brain from having an idea that turns out not to be useful…without also shutting off those ideas that might turn out to be useful?

Our brains are general purpose intruments. They may be been designed to help us remember where the water holes are located and when the zebra migrate, and how to get along with other members of the tribe, but an intelligence that was capable ONLY of those things–and no others–wouldn’t exactly be an intelligence, would it? It would be a collection of reflexes and instincts. If you are going to allow flexibility and creativity, you have to allow creativity and flexibility. Those things will take you in directions you didn’t expect, otherwise they wouldn’t be creativity.

Let’s take another example, but instead of your brain let’s take your legs. Your legs are designed to carry you from place to place, right? That is why your legs evolved from the flippers of lobe-finned fish. But your leg is capable of much more than just walking. You can kick with it, you can stomp with it, you can test the temperature of water with it, you can swim with it, you can peddle a bicycle with it. It is hard to imagine how you could develop a leg that was ONLY capable of moving you from place to place–the intended purpose of the leg–without also being capable of many other things.

And so the leg can be used for other things, and may eventually change shape so radically that it isn’t useful for walking anymore…maybe it is now a flipper, or a wing, or an arm, or a tiny useless stump.

By analogy, our brains are designed for one thing, but they can be used for many more things. A brain that is capable of usefull creativity but not pointless creativity would be a very strange thing…I can’t even imagine how such a brain might exist.

answer: evolution doesn’t know whats useful and whats not till someone actually trys it, so for us to be able to make spears and cars and rocket ships we gotta be trying and makeing smiley face posters and code red mountain dew.

  1. The majority of early humans probably did not spend all that much time in caves.
  2. This fails to account for creativity in warm, dry places, such as Africa and Australia.
  3. They were still able to hunt in the winter. That’s why they are so often referred to as nomadic tribes.

I noticed that no-one has mentioned any meme theory here. Is memetics discredited or something? Perhaps this should be a GQ of its own…

Another explanation I’ve heard for creativity and sense of humour is that it developed due to sexual selection, with men being creative in order to impress women (this behaviour can be seen in species such as bower birds). Sexual selection commonly takes mutations which have a mild usefulness (being creative in certain areas has advantages for survival) and drives a far greater increase in the property being selected for, even when the property ceases to have any survival value. I seem to recall that Matt Ridley discusses this in The Red Queen.

With regard to meme theory, it is possible that a society which encourages storytelling would have greater social cohesion, as belladonna says, and be able to communicate its values more effectively, therefore leading to the spread of the idea that storytelling is valuable. Storytelling is very widespread in most societies, irrespective of their level of development. However, if there is a natural urge to tell stories (which is possible) then a memetic explanation for the widespread occurence of storytelling is unnecessary.