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.
When they tried repeating the study for heterosexual women, no significant change was found. It’s only 40 people, hardly enough to qualify as even a preliminary study, but it would be interesting to see further research on this.
One theory suggested by the researchers was:
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.