Cultural displays, such as art and science, are proposed to be used by males to compete for potential mates. As a result, the desire to engage in such behaviours will diminish following marriage. Male competition in sport can be considered a cultural display for potential mates, therefore male sporting performance will be negatively affected by marriage. Here we show that professional male tennis players perform significantly worse in the year after their marriage compared to the year before, whereas there is no such effect for unmarried players of the same age. Therefore the results suggest that following marriage, males experience an evolved psychological mechanism that leads to less motivation to engage in intra-sexual competition. Fluctuating testosterone (T) levels are discussed as providing the underlying biochemical changes necessary for such mechanisms.
M. F. Bergeron C. M. Maresh W. J. Kraemer A. Abraham B. Conroy C. Gabaree 1991 Tennis — a physiological profile during match play International Journal of Sports Medicine 12 474 479.
A. Booth J. M. Dabbs 1993 Testosterone and men's marriage Social Forces 72 463 477.
A. Booth G. Shelley A. Mazur G. Tharp R. Kittok 1989 Testosterone, and winning and losing in human competition Hormones and Behavior 23 556 571.
T. C. Burnham J. F. Chapman P. B. Gray M. H. Mcintyre S. F. Lipson P.T. Ellison 2003 Men in committed, romantic relationships have lower testosterone Hormones and Behavior 44 119 122.
C. Faurie D. Pontier M. Raymond 2004 Student athletes claim to have more sexual partners than other students Evolution and Human Behaviour 25 1 8.
P. B. Gray J. F. Chapman T. C. Burnham M. H. McIntyre S. F. Lipson P.T. Ellison 2004 Human male pair bonding and testosterone Human Nature 15 119 131.
P. B. Gray S. M. Kahlenberg E. S. Barrett S. F. Lipson P. T. Ellison 2002 Marriage and fatherhood are associated with lower testosterone in males Evolution and Human Behavior 23 193 201.
P. B. Gray C. F. J. Yang H. G. Pope 2006 Fathers have lower salivary testosterone levels than unmarried men and married non-fathers in Beijing, China Proc. Roy. Soc. B. 273 333 339.
V. Griskevicius R. B. Cialdini D. T. Kenrick 2006 Peacocks, Picasso, and parental investment: The effects of romantic motives on creativity Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91 63 76.
M. Haselton G. F. Miller 2006 Women's fertility across the cycle increases the short-term attractiveness of creative intelligence compared to wealth Human Nature 17 50 73.
S. Kanazawa 2000 Scientific discoveries as cultural displays: A further test of Miller's Courtship model Evolution and Human Behaviour 21 317 321.
S. Kanazawa 2003 Why productivity fades with age: The crime-genius connection Journal of Research in Personality 37 257 272.
A. Mazur J. Michalek 1998 Marriage, divorce, and male testosterone Social Forces 77 315 330.
G. F. Miller 1999 Sexual selection for cultural displays R.I.M. Dunbar C. Knight C. Power The Evolution of Culture. Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh, Scotland 71 91.
G. F. Miller 2000 The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. William Hienemann London.
D. Nettle H. Clegg 2006 Schizotypy, creativity and mating success in humans Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B: Biological Sciences 273 611 615.
J. C. Wingfield R. E. Hegner A. M. Dufty G. F. Ball 1990 The “Challenge Hypothesis”: Theoretical implications for patterns of testosterone secretion, mating systems and breeding strategies The American Naturalist 136 829 846.