Case Study – Creative Intelligence

Below I have posted descriptions of 4 men from a case study I was involved with as part of a graduate study for personality psychology. Before you ask, no, this wasn’t an original study, however it was a measures experiment we performed to see how the results matched with our own university.These descriptions are excerpts from that case study comparing female mate selection. They were presented individually to 101 university women between the ages of 18 and 36. All were single/unmarried and none were aware of the intent of the experiment. I’ll present more details of the experiment after you have chance to respond so as not to spoil your genuine responses. Here are the descriptions:

M is an art student. M has always had a passion for painting and plans to pursue a career in art. He creates paintings of people and complex landscapes. His paintings are so lifelike that they are often mistaken for photographs. The consensus amongst his art professors is that he is, by far, the most talented student they have seen. One professor, an expert on lifelike paintings, says he believes M is one of the most talented artists ever to produce these paintings. To make extra money to support his schooling, M has sold a few of his best paintings. They have sold for between 100 and 200 dollars. One professor lamented that M’s paintings are worth far more, but like so many other artists, he will probably never make very much money selling them.

L is an art student. He paints abstract paintings. L came into art by chance. He took an art class as an elective because it fit well in his schedule. For his midterm project, he produced an abstract painting after an hour of “fooling around” with the paint and canvas. The majority of the painting actually consisted of paint he accidentally spilled onto the canvas. A very wealthy man who was looking for art for his home discovered L’s painting in the student art studio. He paid L $5,000 dollars for the painting. Some of the man’s other wealthy friends liked L’s painting and commissioned a total of $100,000 in paintings from him. L and his art professors were shocked at the success of L’s paintings, because, in the words of one professor, “he has no real talent, just some good luck.” L continues to capitalize on his success by selling his abstract art.

L and M are considered highly desirable by other women on campus and very attractive. Friends of L and M say that they are dependable, kind, and generous friends.

J is an entrepreneur who had great success in his first business venture. He started a small software business in a friend’s garage. His product was a new kind of software for improving factory designs to radically increase the profitability of manufacturing. Within his first year, J secured contracts with Ford, General Electric, and Boeing. In the next three years, J sold his software to most of the top manufacturing companies in the United States and several of the top companies in Asia. After 5 years in business, J’s company was valued at 120 million dollars and had 250 employees. The Wall Street Journal credited the success of J’s company to the “brilliance and novelty” of J’s product and to J’s “sheer genius as a businessman.” However, J’s company fell victim to misfortune the next year. After J rejected a take-over bid from Microsoft, Microsoft filed a lawsuit claiming that J’s software infringed on some of their patents. Although most experts agreed that the suit had no merit, the cost of defending himself against the lawsuit created huge cash flow problems for J, which drove the company into bankruptcy. Although J has very little money left, he has recently begun a new business venture to sell another of the software products he has invented.

R recently inherited 20 million dollars from the couple who had adopted him when he was a year old. They died in a car crash, having made their fortune in commercial real estate. Before they died, R worked as a sales person at a computer company. Although R worked at the company for several years, he had not advanced past his starting salary or rank within the company. He went to a community college, but after graduation he didn’t feel sure what to do with his life. A friend who was working at the computer company suggested that R join him and work there. In R’s words, “I guess I’m just not very good at this job. At least now I won’t have to worry about money any more.” R and his adoptive parents were very close, and he was deeply saddened by their deaths.

J and R are both attractive and in their mid-twenties. They were recently nominated as two of the most eligible bachelors in Los Angeles.

Bear in mind, these guys a theoretical archetypes, how they relate to women is irrelevant. How the subject women percieved them is what’s being assessed. Of these 4 men, which do you suppose was rated the highest in desirability with which to have a short-term sexual affair with by these women? And which man was rated the highest in desirability to enter into a long-term relationship with?

This study was done to determine comparative priorities in women with regards to male ‘creative intelligence’ vs.‘provisioning ability’ in female mate selection. I would’ve titled this thread as such, but I wanted to get some unbiased and impulse responses from readers here to see what the perceptions of these archetypes were from men and the reactions guys expected from women to these archetypes.

You’ll notice that care was taken in these archetype descriptions to balance out the physical attractiveness of each man (i.e. both artists were considered equally attractive by peers and both businessmen were ‘eligible’ bachelors). What was at issue wasn’t their extrinsic characteristics – comparative physiques or obvious Alpha presence – but what women chose in regards to these men’s intrinsic characteristics. The theory being that Creative Intelligence is of a higher mating value in the short term while a better Provisioning ability is more desirable in the long term. Bear in mind that hypergamy influences the decision making process for both of these sexual strategies. Also added was the caveat that legitimacy of provisioning ability, and the potential for future provisioning in it’s absence (i.e. the down on their luck men), played a factor in this mate selection.

Creative Intelligence

So what exactly is “Creative Intelligence”? Although there is no firm consensus on how to define it, we often know it when we see it. We also know a bit about it from a century of creativity research. Within humans, creative intelligence is closely associated with the highly heritable general intelligence, and creative intelligence seems to rely on the generation, selective elaboration, and skillful implementation of ideas and strategies. In other words, creativity represents a strong capacity for successful improvisation, thus it became a desirable, selected-for species survival trait.

The problem is that creativity sounds desirable, as does intelligence, so “creative intelligence” can become a vague term that seems useful for solving any behavioral problem, whether technological, ecological, social, sexual, or cultural. Many plausible adaptive functions explain the origins of human creative intelligence. These include: tool-making and tool-using, hunting, foraging, and food preparation methods, social strategizing within and between groups and sexual courtship dynamics (i.e. hunter-gatherer proto-Game).

Sorry for the psych lesson, but we had to be specific.

Trade Offs

As I elaborated in Schedules of Mating, most women face trade-offs in mating. In selecting a long-term mate, it makes hypergamic sense for women to put greater weight on traits that advertise ability and willingness to invest in protection, provisioning, and care of the woman and her offspring. This will favor the evolution of ‘good dad’ indicators – reliable cues of paternal investment ability and willingness to participate in those responsibilities. In our past, women of very high mate value (HB 8 and above) had the luxury of attracting a long-term mate who has both good dad potential and good genes. Fast forward through the ages and women have progressively had to settle for a committed partner who is not ideal either paternally or genetically. Then add to this the increasing complexity of men adapting to mimic these cues in order to facilitate their own breeding strategy. Consequently women are, by order of degree, incentivized to secure better genes or better paternal care from short-term or extra-pair partners, while simultaneously seeking long term provider males. Either would help at any time.

In this study, the idea was that, issues of relative attraction and arousal being satisfied, women will prefer a male possessing a higher capacity for Creative Intelligence in short-term sexual encounters to ensure the best possible future options for her offspring, while choosing a mate with better Provisioning ability for long term parental investment.

Art and business were chosen as two contrasting domains of work. Each requires distinct styles of creative intelligence, but both demand combinations of practical and theoretical skills, individual effort and social interaction. Hence, merit-based success in either domain may function as a mental fitness indicator. In each domain (art or business), one vignette described a man who showed high creative intelligence in his work, but who was poor due to bad luck and adverse circumstances. The other vignette in each set described a man who was average on creative intelligence, but who was wealthy due to good luck and beneficial circumstances. All vignettes made clear that each man’s creativity level was largely endogenous, reflecting natural (and presumably heritable) talent, but that his wealth level was largely accidental, gained through no merit or fault of his own.


Each woman completed two forced-choice questions: (1) “Based on these descriptions, who do you think you might find more desirable for a short-term sexual affair?”; (2) “Based on these descriptions, who do you think you might find more desirable for a long-term committed relationship?” (L or M in the artist vignettes, and R or J in the entrepreneur vignettes). Next, participants rated the desirability of each man as a short-term mate and as a long-term mate on two 9-point scales (where ‘1’ = not at all desirable, ‘5’ = average; ‘9’ = extremely desirable). The rating questions were as follows: “Overall, how desirable would you find L [M, R, or J] as a long-term partner?” “Overall, how desirable would you find L [M, R, or J] as a short-term partner?

In this study M was overwhelmingly chosen as the short term partner. 89% of the participants chose the naturally talented, but out of luck artist for a short term sexual encounter. 7% chose L the rich artist, 3% chose J the poor/talented businessman and 1% opted for R the wealthy/untalented businessman.

J was rated highest for a long-term relationship, but not as significantly as M in the short term. 67% of our subjects chose J, and surprisingly 17% chose L (rich artist). R was rated at 12% and M took 4% for the long term choice.

35 responses to “Case Study – Creative Intelligence

  • Joe

    Knowing that hookup culture permits women full indulgence in these passing fancies, it is hard not to be a misogynist.

  • Necorochi

    Basically if you make a shit ton of money your a long term provider.

    *cough* GOLD DIGGERS!*cough*


    The cool thing about J is that he is a good mix of Creative Intelligence, which if you were biased you would say would be good for shirt term(pump & dump) but he ALSO makes allot of money, which if your biased you would think that making allot of money would be a Long term provider trait hence “Gold-Digger”.

    That’s the key, to have perfect balance.

  • Necorochi

    Which overall you need “Creative Intelligence” to make allot of money. ^__^

  • (R)Evoluzione

    A little misogyny is a good thing, for you and your dating life, as long as you conceptualize a woman’s “flaws” as features, not bugs.

    As men this mathematical exposition of hyergamy is disturbing, but no one ever said the red pill goes down easy. This form of female mate selection based on meritous achievement is a way of maintaining the gene pool. Be glad for it, and let it push you to be the best man you can be.

  • Fenix

    whoa gene selection through cognizant perceptible capability! it all makes sense now. It really is whats on the inside that counts. I would surmise that the short term mating strategy is the inherent VISCERAL response that you want to activate within a woman whether your goal would be long term or short term and to continue activating that response by showing her your genes.

  • Jon

    It will be easier in a few years – enter your DNA into a database and get matched with your perfect mate with maybe a few alternatives on both sides, adjusted for location. All the hypergamy stuff will be incorporated into the cross referencing and matching algorithm… Different criteria for hookup v longer term.

  • Jon

    With a finance/bank account/salary/shares and wealth adjustment feed, supplementing the longer term match cross-reference!

  • Justanotherintelligentintrovert

    Did the results match those of the original study?

  • Rooster

    I spent the first 20years of my adult life in the matrix and because I’m fairly close to the artistic abilities described as ‘M’, I managed to [accidentally on my part] attract and marry a solid HB 7 despite me being a 3 or 4 visually and radiating beta waves on an embarrassing scale.
    Unfortunately I didn’t realize that the tactic I needed to avoid the inevitable hypergamic divorce (three years ago) was to slowly change from ‘M’ type to ‘J’ type behavior, once the kids arrived / genetics successfully passed on.
    Well I took the red pill two years ago. I wish I took it in my twenties and not my late thirties but better late than never.

  • nemesis

    This case study is the perfect example of why you should never be to overt with a woman on giving information on your income sources, but you could overtly give information on your hobbies and artistic passions.
    I’m not a big supporter of Roosh but he wrote an interesting article on why this mechanism works

  • Necorochi

    Hmm interesting ;)

  • yareallypua

    Relevant part starts at 4:40:

    Relevant part starts at 4:20:

    Both clips are worth watching the entirety of but skip to those spots for specifically why money can fuck you over. I’ve seen this happen to guys I know lol and it’s why back when I had money I would pretend not to. Scumbags don’t get ASD. :)

    The Blueprint by Tyler Durden is phenomenally ahead of its time not just in pickup but in general human psychology. I recommend watching it every year or so if you actually go out and do pickup regularly…they should be making Psyche students watch The Blueprint instead of still harping on Pavlov’s dogs.

  • Team-Red

    Why should money even matter anymore to these women in the long-term when it seems like the majority of them have put their careers first and put marriage/kids off until later on in life? It seems like the dating world is polluted with 30+ year old career women that have been riding the carousel 10-15 years and are now ready to “settle down” and pop out 2-3 kids by ripe old age of 40. What these women seem to have forgotten is the greater risks involved having children so late in life. For example, chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome.

    “The risk of Down Syndrome increases with age, from about 1 in 1,250 for a woman at age 25, to 1 in 1,000 at age 30, 1 in 350 at age 35, and 1 in 100 at age 40. Strikingly, the risk is increased to 1 in 60 by age 42.”

    With the increasing amount of single women in the 30+ category still planning on having kids at some point in their life, it only makes logical sense that we can anticipate more retarded children being born in the future.

  • Good Luck Chuck

    I’ve seen that dudes material and it looks pretty solid but I have serious doubts about the whole “when a chick sees you have money she will automatically want to be taken on dates before she puts out” deal.

    I had some crazy ass rockstar digs for awhile and never, EVER, under any circumstances, whether I met the chick out on the town or met her at my place through friends, NEVER did I once have a chick clam up because she went from thinking I was “good genes” dude to “good dad” dude when she saw my house and cars and such. Not even close. Same with my friends who have money. Matter of fact, having the big house with the pool, jacuzzi, boat on the lake is an absolute panty dropper. If it isn’t then you’re doing something wrong and it has nothing to do with your money. Trust me on this. Anyone who tells you different is either the guy with other problems or he’s never stepped foot into anything bigger than a one bedroom apartment.

    I could write pages and pages of stories about shit that I saw and participated in over the past five years that was a direct or indirect result of the trappings of wealth, but since the topic of money game is taboo most places across the manosphere I won’t even bother. Most guys either don’t believe in themselves enough or are too lazy to do what it takes to be able to have money game which is why it is stigmatized. Too bad for them cause it’s the difference between dealing with the time and effort involved in recruiting from a pool of flaky bitches and pussy showing up at your door pretty much ready to fuck.

  • Good Luck Chuck


  • M.Stern

    I expected M to be the favorite for short term mating. It makes sense. If you remove long term provisioning from the picture, women are going to want to spend time with charismatic men. That is what Game is – the art of charisma. Charismatic men are interesting men. M, who is a natural artist type, is by definition interesting. So women will always want a guy like that, money or not.

    In previous historical eras, men like that were too risky for the overwhelming majority of women. They probably did very well in Aristocratic circles though. Wasn’t Raphael a playboy? But in an advanced industrial society, women can take that risk; especially during their 20s.

    I think that the Manosphere makes too much of feminism. I get that feminism, and the Left in general, suck meatloaf. I curse the Left every day of my life. But the unleashing of female hypergamy was bound to happen even if there was no Left. Its *prosperity* that brought this on. This really is just an inevitable cultural evolution of a species that evolved during the Pleistocene era adapting to the industrial civilization that was inevitable given its large brains and the cognitive power that brought with it.

    The Game revolution was going to occur no matter what. The fact that a crazy guy like Mystery was one of the Game Founding Fathers is just a historical accident. But the development of a social technology for inter-gender communications had to happen to help men navigate the changing social conditions brought about by wealth, relative national security and sexual liberty.

  • pliw

    I question the validity of any study that relies on a woman to accurately state who she’d like to fuck.

  • xsplat

    I’ve had periods of success where I saw money giving a positive influence, and I’ve had periods of success where I was quite poor.

    It is a point of pride to be able to have a girl stare up at you in wonder and say “Daddy, you’re not rich, you’re not handsome, why do I love you Daddy?”

    And when things like that happen we have to assume that it’s not about the money. After all the richer younger and more handsome guys didn’t get the girl – and many tried.

    But then here is the problem; it’s not about either or.

    Money is one other signal of fitness, along with whatever we can bring to the table. But money itself is not money game. You have to translate money into money game, and then it can work for you and give you clear advantages.

    Here the either/or crowd will chime in and say ya-but it’s not necessary. You can fuck on a mattress on a floor, so the pad is irrelevant. The question isn’t if you can fuck on a mattress on a floor, the question is out of 100 random attractive women, how many can you fuck on the mattress on the floor, and how many can you fuck in the well appointed digs?

    There are many ways to make money work to advantage, if you have a clue.

    As for girls disqualifying you for long term if you are suitable as a provider, that’s all in the brand marketing and positioning, isn’t it? You don’t get blown out from a one night stand by being well positioned to be a provider. You get qualified for a one night stand by displaying that you have good genes. That can be done by showing creative intelligence through your banter and social acumen through your well timed escalation techniques. Or through some other talent, such as M has.

  • Rollo Tomassi

    Yes. Within 3-4% margin of error.

  • Rollo Tomassi

    Between the ages of 20 to 24, I was piss poor. My income consisted of the paycheck from whatever half-assed job I was working in college, yet this was the time of my life that I nailed 75% of the women in my book (40+).

    There were times when I would show up to a gig in Hollywood my band was playing with literally nothing in my wallet. If we didn’t have to pay to play we might have gotten a $50 bar tab, but I still had to be careful not to drink too much because I knew I could get women to buy me drinks.

    I routinely got laid through a combination of social proof, my looks and an unapologetic sexualized attitude. These chicks would buy me drinks, meals, give me stylish clothes, one even let me use her car for a while because she worried about me riding a motorcycle – and all for the privilege of giving me head or having me bang them.

    I realize that sounds like I’m glossing myself, but the point is that if a woman wants to fuck you, she’ll find ways to fuck you irrespective of your financial situation. I don’t necessarily see money as an impediment to getting laid, in fact I think it can be optioned as a form of Game. The problem most of the guys with money have in hooking up is that in order to get a significant amount of wealth they neglect their social intelligence in favor of generating money. So they turn into chumps with cash (a golddigger’s and PUA guru’s meat & potatoes).

    Affluence without Game just makes you the guy showing off via conspicuous consumption. An AFC with $100K in his account is still an AFC. All women are hypergamous, but that hypergamy manifests itself in different ways at different stages of a girl’s life. Of the girls I was tapping in my 20s, precious few entertained any thoughts of me turning into their long term security provider in their immediate future.

  • openedeyes

    Actually these days there are test done by 15-20 weeks into a pregnancy that can predict a downs child with a very high degree of accuracy. That is why you see less downs kids these days, as 80% of parents terminate.

  • SMV in Girl-World «

    […] if on cue, Team Red vents his frustration from yesterday’s comment thread: “Why should money even matter anymore to these women in the long-term when it seems like the […]

  • Wudang

    If you look at tribes in Africa it is pretty obvious that a person who is good at making music can get huge influence and status in a tribe. Same probably goes for someone who can create good art or fill the role of the shaman.

  • Wudang

    In case anyone missed scientists confirm de facto matriarchy:

  • Team-Red

    Yes, I am studying this now in Pathophysiology class where they look for increased nuchal translucency (thickness of the nape of the neck) at 10-14 weeks. That’s besides my original point though in that women deciding to wait this long are taking a much bigger risk in having children born with genetic and developmental disorders. Also, terminating the pregnancy may go against their beliefs.

  • Introsphere roundup – Week thru June 12 | The Second Estate

    […] Rollo Tomassi – SMV in Girl-World, – Case Study – Creative Intelligence […]

  • yareallypua

    There are obviously other factors that come into play. A beta AFC buying a girl a drink turns the girl off, an alpha guy buying a girl a drink doesn’t. Tyler is generalizing the concept for his audience because those guys possibly aren’t all badass millionaire rockstars surrounded by pussy.

    This is why the pickup community looks at the reference experiences of thousands of guys instead of just one guy before we make conclusions lol

  • yareallypua


    Yep. It’s a mindfuck when they get the money and realize they’re still shit with girls except now they can land gold-diggers oboy. Same thing happens with the 6-pack study guys who realize they still don’t have choice, except now more average/far girls will approach them…but that turbo hottie they want is still waiting for them to have the balls and game to approach and seduce her.

    Your situ also goes back to what Chuck said in reply to me above. There are a lot of factors involved for me to try to simplify for explanation here (this stuff is broken down in depth in PUA literature), but the jist is:

    If you give off a provider vibe in general, as a man, then you’d better have money and stuff to back it up because girls will expect it. So if you’re a lame beta who hasn’t swallowed the red pill you SHOULD focus on getting money because you’re going to be Mikey in Swingers with girls asking “what kind of car do you drive?” and snubbing you if it’s not a nice one. Because a provider beta who can’t provide is failing at the one thing girls expect from his type.

    But if you give off a non-provider vibe in general, like say a grungy player guy who’s in a band playing in dive bars, girls aren’t expecting money from you, they’re expecting game. You can have the money, that’s cool, it gives you access to girls as situations that you might not have access to (which is part of what Chuck is saying up above, you can dress like a slob and field don’t care but the bouncer who decides if you get into the nightclub where those girls ARE cares and you won’t get in dressed like shit), but in terms of gina tingles, the girls don’t give a shit because from you they’re expecting something different than the provider beta, based on your vibe.

    That’s about the best I can sum it up. We’re talking really deep concepts here lol

  • yareallypua

    “more average/*fat girls”

    “girls *and situations”

    “like a slob and *girls don’t care”

    Gotta proof-read better. Fucking iPhone lol

  • martaj1618

    Reblogged this on Blyad and commented:
    Female preference in short term and long term relationship

  • Aaron (@Arronski)

    My dad taught me this lesson. When I was like 17 if he was going to see an unfamiliar woman he would borrow my very average Honda which looked ridiculous with a 50-something man driving it ’cause he didn’t want them seeing his Jaguar.

  • Vestiges «

    […] factors for parental investment became important. Artists became attractive bcause they possessed creative intelligence and this was manifested in their creative abilities to solve problems. When you see the broke […]

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