Do Attractive Long-Term Mates Suppress a Woman’s Creativity?

Friday, July 25, 2025.

Let’s say you’re a woman. You’re scanning dating profiles.

One catches your eye: good jawline, reads books, doesn’t look too likely he’s going to quote Joe Rogan over brunch.

Better yet, he’s looking for something serious.

In theory, this kind of profile should bring out your best self—spark your originality, ignite your creativity. You want to stand out, right?

But according to a recent study published in Evolutionary Psychology, the opposite may happen.

If you find yourself too sexually aroused by this long-term-oriented dreamboat, your creative engine might not rev up—it might just stall out completely.

A Surprising Link Between Desire and Creativity

The study, led by Katarzyna Galasinska of SWPS University in Poland, explored how exposure to attractive dating profiles shaped creative thinking.

It built on the idea—long rooted in evolutionary theory—that creativity may function not just as a problem-solving tool, but as a kind of mating signal.

That clever joke you dropped in your Hinge bio? The improvised lyrics in your text? That’s not just whimsy—it’s advertising.

Earlier studies have suggested that romantic or sexual contexts can enhance creativity, particularly for men (Griskevicius et al., 2006).

Creative thinking—especially originality and verbal fluency—is seen as attractive in long-term partners (Haselton & Miller, 2006). So it’s reasonable to expect that flirting, dating, or imagining courtship might activate these traits.

But Galasinska and her colleagues wanted to know what happens when you don’t just imagine a hypothetical mate, but actually view one—complete with photos, bios, and dating intentions.

In two online experiments with nearly 1,000 Polish heterosexual adults aged 18 to 40, they tested whether mate attractiveness and stated relationship orientation (short-term vs. long-term) would influence creativity.

The results? Nuanced, and not what most of us were expecting.

The Emotional Backfire of Long-Term Appeal

In the first study, participants viewed either attractive or unattractive photos of opposite-sex individuals, then wrote a short dating bio to promote themselves.

Trained raters scored these bios for four markers of creativity: fluency, flexibility, originality, and self-description as a creative person. The second study used a classic creativity test (the Alternative Uses Task) before and after participants saw profiles of attractive individuals either seeking short-term or long-term relationships.

Here’s where it gets interesting: women who viewed long-term-oriented attractive mates produced more original and fluent ideas—but only when they weren’t sexually aroused. Once desire entered the picture, creativity dropped.

In other words, when women encountered a high-quality, long-term potential mate and wanted him—wanted him in a deep, body-aware way—their creative expression began to shut down.

Arousal suppressed fluency and originality. It did not affect the diversity of their ideas (flexibility), but it dulled the spark that makes those ideas interesting or memorable.

Men, Mood, and the Straight Line of Desire

The pattern was different for men.

Their creativity wasn’t affected much by the long-term versus short-term distinction. Instead, men who felt happier or more motivated after viewing attractive profiles—especially single men—showed improved performance on creativity tasks.

For men, it seems, mood and performance motivation matter more than the type of romantic partner or level of sexual arousal. Positive emotional states appear to facilitate creative performance in courtship contexts.

This gender split aligns with prior findings from sexual selection theory, which suggests that men often use creativity as a proactive display, while women may engage in more strategic, context-sensitive signaling (Miller, 2000; Kaufman et al., 2016).

In other words, when men want to impress, they crank up the jazz hands. When women want to impress, they first do a risk calculation.

Evolutionary Theory Offers a Clue

If creativity functions as a signal—something to catch the attention of mates—it would make sense that it emerges most strongly when a person feels confident, safe, and motivated to display themselves.

But Galasinska suggests that for women, arousal in the presence of a desirable long-term mate might flip the focus from expression to evaluation.

Sexual arousal in women, especially in long-term mating contexts, may activate systems involved in mate assessment and caution—slowing self-expression while the brain checks for red flags or commitment cues. It's as if the body says, “Before we get all poetic, is this man going to be around for the second trimester?”

That would explain why creative output increased when the long-term partner was desirable but not too arousing.

Mild attraction might inspire a woman to shine. Strong desire might trigger a strategic retreat.

Lab Limitations and Real-Life Implications

The researchers are careful not to overreach, I give them that much credit.

Here’s the challenge. Viewing dating profiles in an online experiment doesn’t fully capture the complexity of real-world chemistry. Static images are a very poor substitute for tone of voice, scent, or charisma—elements that often carry more weight in real-life attraction. And of course, creativity is notoriously tricky to measure, especially in short lab tasks. Frankly, O debated whether or not to write about this research for that very reason.

Still, what I still find intriguing about Evolutionary Psychology is how findings like these posit a richer understanding of how psychological states like arousal and motivation dynamically shape cognition—and how these processes differ across gender.

The idea that creativity is a pure, spontaneous force is romantic. But science keeps telling us otherwise.

It's not just inspiration that fuels our ideas—it’s context. Emotional safety. Desire, in just the right dosage. The kind of attention that stimulates, but doesn’t hijack, the system.

So What Does It Mean?

If you're a woman wondering why your witty self disappears the moment a high-quality long-term partner enters the room, this study offers some comfort: you’re not broken—you’re wired.

Desire might suppress creativity because, at least evolutionarily speaking, it’s time to gather data, not perform. The mating mind isn’t just a stage—it’s also a control panel. And sometimes, the curtain stays down while the calculations run.

For men, meanwhile, the path is clearer: if you’re feeling good and you want to impress someone, your creativity may surge. Which explains why so many first dates involve ukuleles.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Galasinska, K., Szymkow, A., & Correa Varella, M. A. (2024). The Influence of Mating Context on Creativity: Insights from Simulated Dating Scenarios. Evolutionary Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704924123456

Bauserman, R. (2002). Child adjustment in joint-custody versus sole-custody arrangements: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Family Psychology, 16(1), 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.16.1.91

Griskevicius, V., Cialdini, R. B., & Kenrick, D. T. (2006). Peacocks, Picasso, and parental investment: The effects of romantic motives on creativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(1), 63–76. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.1.63

Haselton, M. G., & Miller, G. F. (2006). Women's fertility across the cycle increases the short-term attractiveness of creative intelligence. Human Nature, 17(1), 50–73. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-006-1020-0

Kaufman, S. B., Kozbelt, A., Bromley, M. L., & Miller, G. F. (2016). The role of creativity and humor in human mate selection. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 403–416). Wiley.

Miller, G. (2000). The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. Anchor Books.