14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new set of scientific investigations, it would appear that men tend to experience an elevated tolerance for taking risks after physical contact. Investigators behind the new work says that something as simple as a pat on the back by women makes men more ready to take on situations that they would have otherwise at least reconsidered. The new work also showed some fairly interesting facts about how men react when the same type of encouragements came from other men.
The team says that a woman patting them on the back made men more willing to risk in gambling games. However, the same correlations did not hold true when the woman spoke to them beforehand, or if a man did the actual patting. LiveScience reports that the research team's first thought was naturally about how mothers tend to use touch to comfort their children. It could be that the habit is never erased from the unconscious minds of men, who tend to react to it much later in life.
Scientists add that the sense of increased security, such as the one that made men risk more, generally comes from attachment. This behavior is in turn promoted by touch, and the roots of this correlation go to the time men were only little children. One very interesting thing to note here is that the feeling security is a great promoter for the spirit of adventure. Kids generally tend to try out a lot of new things, when they know that nothing can happen to them. Unfamiliar contexts and strange situations therefore become appealing, and even desirable. This may have happened in the new study as well, the team says, quoted by LiveScience.
In a new research paper, published online in the latest issue of the esteemed journal Psychological Science, researchers at the Columbia University, in the United States, and the University of Alberta, in Canada, say that the behavior of test subject depended a lot on how they were greeted at the beginning of the experiment. Some of the men in the study received a handshake, from either a male or a female, while others only got a light pat on the shoulder, and others no physical contact at all. CU expert Jonathan Levav and UA scientist Jennifer J. Argo led the new investigation. The end result showed that a light pat on the shoulder prompted the highest amount of risk-taking from men, much more so than those who received a handshake. The correlation was strongest when a woman gave the pat.