Comments on: Are Women’s Brains Hard-Wired to Have Trouble Resisting Temptation?

By: Andrea

Andrea — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:15:19 +0000

Seems to me this may be a case of nurture, not nature. In the article, it says the regions of the brain with less activity in the male participants have been linked by other studies to “emotional regulation.” Men in our society are conditioned to not let their emotions show – “be a man”, “real men don’t cry”, etc. whereas women expressing emotion is more accepted. I wonder if this has anything to do with the results?

By: Phil Doran

Phil Doran — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:38:14 +0000

If the Serpent had offered the apple to Adam it might have saved a lot of trouble!

By: qbsmd

qbsmd — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:08:20 +0000

How could they have controlled for sample bias? I would think that only people with above average temptation resisting abilities would agree to go 17 hours without food for the experiment in the first place.

By: Chubbee

Chubbee — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:25:31 +0000

noureddine, what language do you normally speak? Something is getting lost in translation.

By: noureddine

noureddine — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:16:58 +0000

is just a point in nonstoplooking to build family

By: Bob Snyder

Bob Snyder — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:05:16 +0000

lol, I’m not sure what value it would have but no matter the outcome, it would inevitably end up being ammunition in the ever-continuing gender war.

By: Sundance

Sundance — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:27:56 +0000

Bob: Yes I’m aware of the differences you pointed out between “temptation to re-indulge” and “temptation to experiment”. I was however responding to earlier comments which seemed to dismiss out-of-hand the idea that women succumb to sexual temptation more readily than men. Rather than jumping to a conclusion, the proper thing to do is propose a hypothesis (which I did, kinda) and then design an experiment (which you did, kinda), and look at the data determine if the hypothesis is falsified or not.

Just as the described experiment involved asking the subjects about their favourite food, and then showing them pictures of it, perhaps one could conduct an experiment in which the subjects are asked to describe their favourite sexual fantasy, and then watched appropriately-themed porn.

Of course, one could certainly question the value of such research… :-)

By: Bob Snyder

Bob Snyder — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:38:21 +0000

Sundance… the experiment used the favorite foods of the individuals. Moreover, the parts of the brain that showed less activity were linked in other studies with memory activation. Your analogy uses “temptation to experiment” with sexual endeavors but this is not consistent with the study above. If the study were about temptation of experimenting, they wouldn’t have wafted the smells of the subjects favorite foods and it wouldn’t have used the pictures of those foods, etc. They would have used new foods. So instead of experimentation, it might help explain if a study were to show that women had a tendency to cheat on their significant others more than men. However, the study would have to control for age of sexual peak among many other factors which could contribute to such a phenomenon. Do i think this is the case? No, I’m just clarifying the correct analogy. This is all conjecture at this point anyway because a sample of n=23 is hardly qualified to be extrapolated to an entire population, there are just way too many errors or biases that could exist.

By: Bystander

Bystander — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:41:39 +0000

A little discipline and self control is the great equalizer??

By: Sundance

Sundance — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:05:58 +0000

How do you know it isn’t true of sex – or at least flirtation? If so it may partly explain why more women than men seem inclined to experiment with bisexuality (i.e. once the risk of getting pregnant is removed from the equation.)

By: nick

nick — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:06:25 +0000

Re: Nick. Yes, yes, yes!

By: CW

CW — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:54:24 +0000

LOL

By: Nick Jordan

Nick Jordan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:25:37 +0000

Now if only this were true for sex . . .