As soon as I read “evolutionary perspectives” I noped out. Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes, especially not as a result of evolution.
Music may have helped us in our journey somehow, maybe even as a precursor to language. But music is something we do to bring us together, not to compete for dominance.
>As soon as I read “evolutionary perspectives” I noped out. Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes
...and their study, unsurprisingly, came to the same conclusion.
>But music is something we do to bring us together, not to compete for dominance.
Sure, but the specific genre they looked into is more athletics than music.
Competition for dominance may be a part of music and poetry, too.
Diss tracks have existed since ancient times ("Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"[1]), and today's Nicki Minaj vs. Megan Thee Stallion feud is very much a performative competition for dominance.
Music brings us together, music also divides us (many subcultures formed around musical genres).
It's a medium of human expression. And as such, it can reflect all of our sides.
I've always found evo psych interesting and it has some very serious scolars, a lot of experiments and predictions, yet a few years ago it used to be very trendy to say it is all bunk and projective stories about human behavior. Also it seems some people are more comfortable with evo-psych when it comments on male-behavior than when it comments on female behavior. I think the entire field is massively interesting.
The problem with evo psych is the poor science that goes into verifying the claims, not the concept itself. The field presents a lot of extremely interesting hypotheses, but then does not test them rigorously.
Psychology can often be pretty bad about this (overreliance on very weak experimental methods, such as surveys), but evolutionary psychology is a particularly weak subfield of psychology.
For this reason, scientists in more rigorous fields tend to look upon evolutionary psychology as pseudoscience.
If there is good science happening there, I am unaware of it. I strongly suspect that serious scientists interested in this subject matter go into more rigorous fields, like evolutionary biology or neuroscience. If you are interested in this subject matter (I know I am!), I recommend following these fields instead because they are far less likely to dress up an under-tested hypothesis as true.
People compete for dominance in literally any possible context. Anything people do at all, a bunch of them do for dominance.
There are people competing for dominance at volunteering in soup kitchens.
Not op, but even if we accept the conclusions from the statistic analysis at face value, stating that guitarists work on their skills hoping to impress others is hardly ground breaking research.
The evolutionary aspect is very interesting, but probably an incomplete picture. Guitar playing and music, all art really, are spaces of the impossible pleasure/fantasy complex and are ripe with psychological nuance.
And yeah, just because you play guitar doesn't mean you're going to get all the girls, maybe even the opposite.
> However, trends within metal music, and especially the genre of extreme metal music with basically virtuoso-level guitar skills
The virtuoso technique of extreme metal guitarists seems to be offset by lack of creativity and feel in the vast majority of cases (imo). Talking about soloing skills mostly...
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 61.8 ms ] threadMusic may have helped us in our journey somehow, maybe even as a precursor to language. But music is something we do to bring us together, not to compete for dominance.
Groupies are a well known thing.
...and their study, unsurprisingly, came to the same conclusion.
>But music is something we do to bring us together, not to compete for dominance.
Sure, but the specific genre they looked into is more athletics than music.
Competition for dominance may be a part of music and poetry, too.
Diss tracks have existed since ancient times ("Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"[1]), and today's Nicki Minaj vs. Megan Thee Stallion feud is very much a performative competition for dominance.
Music brings us together, music also divides us (many subcultures formed around musical genres).
It's a medium of human expression. And as such, it can reflect all of our sides.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16
Psychology can often be pretty bad about this (overreliance on very weak experimental methods, such as surveys), but evolutionary psychology is a particularly weak subfield of psychology.
For this reason, scientists in more rigorous fields tend to look upon evolutionary psychology as pseudoscience.
If there is good science happening there, I am unaware of it. I strongly suspect that serious scientists interested in this subject matter go into more rigorous fields, like evolutionary biology or neuroscience. If you are interested in this subject matter (I know I am!), I recommend following these fields instead because they are far less likely to dress up an under-tested hypothesis as true.
Says who?
Eric Clapton said that he learned guitar to meet girls and that was well before the thing with George Harrison.
There's probably a point of diminishing returns but ....
https://www.bonequest.com/2899
Not op, but even if we accept the conclusions from the statistic analysis at face value, stating that guitarists work on their skills hoping to impress others is hardly ground breaking research.
And yeah, just because you play guitar doesn't mean you're going to get all the girls, maybe even the opposite.
The virtuoso technique of extreme metal guitarists seems to be offset by lack of creativity and feel in the vast majority of cases (imo). Talking about soloing skills mostly...
On the other hand, male admiration can still increase reproductive fitness by generating wealth, fame and social contacts for the virtuoso.