Hot Women are Distracting

Talk about an unsurprising research result.

Catching sight of a pretty woman really is enough to throw a man's decision-making skills into disarray, a study suggests.

Pay no attention to this image

The more testosterone he has, the stronger the effect, according to work by Belgian researchers.

Men about to play a financial game were shown images of sexy women or lingerie.

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B study found they were more likely to accept unfair offers than men not been exposed to the alluring images.

The suggestion is that the sexual cues distract the men's thoughts, preventing them from focusing on their task - particularly among those with high natural testosterone levels.

Here strictly for scientific illustration, of course ...
Real Men™ are more easily distracted by the ladies than quiche eaters - again, no surprise here. But the Captain Obvious Prize must go to the following gentleman.

Dr George Fieldman, principal lecturer in psychology at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, told the BBC News website: "The fact [that] men are distracted by sexual cues fits in [with] evolutionary experience. It's what they are expected to do.

"They are looking for opportunities to pass on their genes."

He said the study confirmed what had been suspected by many.

"If a man is being asked to choose between something being presented by an attractive woman and an ugly [man], [he] might not be as dispassionate as [he] could be."

Someone needs to get the BBC a grammar checker; at any rate, you don't say, Dr. Fieldman? I'm shocked, shocked that the sight of beautiful women affects male judgment of presentations: I must rush to convey this brilliant insight to the advertising industry and convention organizers ...

A marvellous new concept for oiling the wheels of commerce I know, let's call them ... booth babes! Am I a creative genius or what?

Comments

[Josh]

ahh, what were you saying?

[Won Joon Choe]

The irony of the original BBC article is that it has a rather plain-looking white woman as an example. Of course, I've never heard of this lady, and it may be a bad picture of her...

[Andrew]

The conclusion is a bit weird - the 'sex cues' only caused subjects not to reject the "unfair" offer, which is actually the rational thing to do (because if you accept the unfair offer, you still get something whereas if you reject it, you get nothing). You could just as easily say that the 'sex cues' cause men to be less spiteful, less inclined to punishing violation of moral norms of 'fairness', or whatever else the theory of the Ultimatum Game suggests. A better experiment would have been some sort of gambling game where people generally do pick the 'rational' choice - e.g. picking from two piles of cards, one which generally yields better results from the other one, and see how long it takes for the subject to pick up on that.

This study is also in need of another control: the 'distraction' could be a non-specific effect of psychological (i.e. not necessarily sexual) arousal. They need a control with stimulating but non-sexual pictures/movies - say, a car chase from an action movie.

[Andrew]

Okay, as I expected, it's just the BBC article making a hash of it - the researchers didn't think that men just had their decision-making skills "ruined" or in "disarray" as if they were just distracted or generally confused - they postulate a specific effect of 'sex cues' on perceived norms of fairness, as well as increasing willingness to accept small, immediate rewards (duh). In fact, the main point of study is not the one in the BBC headline, but rather to show modulation by context cues of the effects of digit ratios that putatively reflect testosterone levels. ("High testosterone" men are *more* likely to reject 'unfair' offers under control conditions but *less* likely after 'sex cues.')

"Context effects may elucidate puzzling inconsistencies. Our results may partly clarify why some reported relationships with 2D:4D are hard to replicate (e.g. the association between testosterone concentrations and digit ratios)... This study suggests that even the physical appearance of the researcher who interacts with respondents, measures digit lengths, etc. might affect the relation between 2D:4D and other variables."

[Frank McGahon]

"The irony of the original BBC article is that it has a rather plain-looking white woman as an example. Of course, I've never heard of this lady, and it may be a bad picture of her.."

It's a not a very flattering picture of Kelly Brook, who is generally quite, er, distracting.

[Abiola]

"You could just as easily say that the 'sex cues' cause men to be less spiteful, less inclined to punishing violation of moral norms of 'fairness', or whatever else the theory of the Ultimatum Game suggests."

... Uh, I didn't quite catch what you were saying? Care to repeat that?

All joking aside though, the "irrationality" of refusing to accept even small rewards goes away if you understand that the high testosterone males are also playing to establish dominance rather than to obtain a monetary reward (and despite no one having asked them to do so). Seeing as quite a few women do prefer dominant males, their behavior makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. Perhaps a better summary of the significance of the results would therefore be: "high testosterone males are distracted from jostling for dominance to improve their mating chances when presented with what seems like an immediate mating possibility", which is still rather obvious to me at least.

"It's a not a very flattering picture of Kelly Brook, who is generally quite, er, distracting."

Yes, I enthusiastically endorse that statement.

http://www.rodsterino.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/front/Front_June_Kelly_Brook_04.jpg
http://www.rodsterino.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/loadedmay/Kelly%20Brook07%20-%20Loaded%20May%202003.jpg
http://www.memorabiliamania.co.uk/images/0700000029.jpg
http://www.wallpaperbase.com/wallpapers/celebs/kellybrook/kelly_brook_12.jpg

Yes, there is indeed much to be enthusiastic about with Ms. Brook!

[jojo]

I must have been looking at crappy photos of Alicia Keys. This picture of her is is is....where was I?