14 DAY TRIAL // They say there are some women so beautiful they can knock the air out of one’s lungs and make one (if that one happens to be a man) lose his mind and make it impossible for him to keep a clear head. A recent study conducted by psychologists at the Radboud University in The Netherlands and cited by The Mirror shows that, indeed, chatting up an attractive woman can have an almost dumbing effect in men.
Men perform worse at intelligence tests after they sit down for a talk with a beautiful woman. This only happens, however, when the woman in question means something for the man, that is, when he’s attracted to her, researchers have also established. Oppositely, women aren’t in any way influenced by sitting down for a talk or flirting with a handsome man, presumably because looks are not everything what they’re looking for in a potential mate.
“Chatting to a pretty woman is bad for a man’s brain – and the prettier she is, the worse it gets. Males who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive female perform less well in brain tests than those with someone they do not fancy. Researchers think it is because men use up so much of the brain trying to impress beautiful women. But women are not affected by chatting to a handsome man. This may be because men are programmed by evolution to think more about mating opportunities.” The Mirror writes of the findings of the study.
Researchers came up with the idea for the study when one of them suddenly found himself in a strange position, that of not being able to remember his own home address when asked for it by a beautiful woman. In order to establish the kind of impact an attractive lady’s presence had on a man’s intellect, the Dutch psychologists gathered 40 male volunteer students and sat them down with beautiful women. Then, they asked them to complete several intelligence tests – not to their surprise, men performed worse than how they did when not in contact with the women.
Dr. George Fieldman of the British Psychological Society explains this by men not being able to focus on something else save mating. “When a man meets a pretty woman he is ‘reproductively focused.’ But a woman also looks for other signs such as wealth, youth and kindness. The look of a man alone would be unlikely to have the same effect.” Fieldman says for The Mirror.