Could musical mastery affect how attractive a person is rated as a prospective partner?

Abstract: Evolutionary psychology explains and predicts human behaviour based on its adaptive value. Some apparently non-adaptive behaviours such as humans’ devotion to music can be explained by sexual selection of costly signals, since it takes time and effort to learn to play an instrument well. Here, participants rated pictures of persons of the opposite sex that were said to play a piece of music that was heard while watching each picture. The music performances were either of low, medium, or high level of skill, and a better performance was predicted to lead to higher ratings of partner attractiveness because it is more costly. No effect of the music was found, except that women rated men as less desirable for a long-term relationships when the skill level was high than when it was medium.