Breaking news! Men become less intelligent when they’re trying to impress women they’d like to sleep with! A new study in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology found that “men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function” than men who talked to women they didn’t want to, er, mate with.
The Telegraph reports that the study, which consisted of 40 male heterosexual students, proceeded as follows:
Each one performed a standard memory test where they had to observe a stream of letters and say, as fast as possible, if each one was the same as the one before last.
The volunteers then spent seven minutes chatting to male or female members of the research team before repeating the test.
The results showed men were slower and less accurate after trying to impress the women. The more they fancied them, the worse their score.
And how did the other sex fare? When the test was repeated with a group of female volunteers, their memory scores stayed the same regardless of whether they’d chatted with a man or a woman.
The researchers even managed to come up with a somewhat scientific theory for why this occurred:
Researchers who carried out the study…think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or “cognitive resources” trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.
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Image: iStockphoto
September 4th, 2009 at 11:38 am
File under WELL DUH.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
the blood flows down to support erection and no way brain can function in such reduced supply of oxygen. I think its obvious and just empirically proved now!
September 4th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
[...] Discover Magazine Blogs [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
“Man she was hot. Under what pretense can I arrange to talk with her again. If I ask her out, what would be the plan? She’s a researcher, so maybe she’d want to go to a museum or something. Oh darn – the test. I gotta get this thing done. I wonder if she’ll be looking at my score? Will she not want to go out with me if I score too low? Wait, I gotta focus on the test…”
September 4th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Does talking to unattractive women make us smarter?
September 4th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
[...] Melissa’s got the details: Breaking news! Men become less intelligent when they’re trying to impress women they’d like to sleep with! A new study in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology found that “men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function” than men who talked to women they didn’t want to, er, mate with. [...]
September 5th, 2009 at 2:41 am
[...] about a study that suggested that talking with women causes men’s brain’s to malfunction. Now this study is back in the media: Breaking news! Men become less intelligent when they’re trying to impress women they’d like to [...]
September 6th, 2009 at 8:33 am
[...] demonstrated that when men interact/talk with women they want to mate with, they become stupid. [Link] It has been a while since one of these [...]
September 8th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Art says: “Does talking to unattractive women make us smarter?”
Sorry, Art, sadly nothing can help your poor gender. It’s okay though because, fortunately for you, some of us females have evolved a trait that makes us think your stupidity is kinda cute..
September 9th, 2009 at 4:55 am
“God gave man a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to run one at a time.”
Robin Williams
September 10th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I totally agree with David