CREATIVITY LINKED TO LOTSA LOVING

The artists among us apparently have more romantic success than the rest of us. Reason? They may be schizo. Reuters reports on a new British study:

In a survey of 425 British adults, researchers found that serious poets and visual artists generally had more sexual partners than those who were either not artistic or only dabbled in the arts.

Further analysis showed that one personality dimension -- a tendency toward "unusual" thoughts and perceptions -- was related to both creativity and sexual success.

That tendency is also seen in people with schizophrenia. And the findings, according to the study authors, may help explain why schizophrenia -- a mental disorder that often runs in families -- has not been extinguished from the gene pool.

Certain schizophrenia-related personality traits, they speculate, may confer benefits when they are not part of a mental illness. When they instead spur creativity, for example, they may offer a mating advantage, according to the researchers, led by Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at the University of Newcastle.

He and colleague Helen Keenoo report their findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Many of the artsy Lotharios tended to have "unusual experiences," meaning atypical thoughts, or "magical thinking." Or it could be that people simply dig artists. This would explain how Ric Ocasek landed Paulina Porizkova.