Sexual Selection Of Men With Attractive Women

This just in, attractive women cause us to discount our futures.

This according to a study; “Do pretty women inspire men to discount the future” which concludes that the sexual selection of men can be “impulsive” when men viewed pictures of attractive women.

In the process of being impulsive men would forsake future higher amounts of money for smaller amounts in the present.

Interesting.

Let’s look at this study.

Sexual Selection Study

The study hypothesized that by showing picture of attractive women, men would discount their future in terms of financial choice while men who were shown pictures of less attractive women would not be affected.

“Discounting” was assessed on the basis of choices between a smaller sum of money tomorrow and a larger sum at a later date, both before and after participants rated the “appeal” of 12 photographs of women.

The study used pictures from “Hot or Not” with 9 and above for the hot pictures, and 4.0 – 5.9 for the less attractive pictures.

The study included men and women but I’m focusing on the men for this study.

If you are curious about women, let’s just say they didn’t discount the future as much as men. You can go to the study itself to read more about the sexual selection of women:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1810021/

Sexual Selection Study Results

The study found that men would discount the future after looking at the pictures of attractive women while men who looked at less attractive women wouldn’t discount their future.

Men were offered amounts of money “tomorrow” ranging between $15 – $35 or a much larger sum, $50 – $75 after a specified delay (over 7 days).

The study concluded that men viewing picture of pretty women was “mildly arousing, activating neural mechanisms associated with cues of sexual opportunity”.

I have no idea what that “neural mechanisms” really means. Obviously it has to do with the brain so I “Googled” it.

Basically, looking at pictures of hot women triggered a response in the “nucleus accumbens” region of your brain that has a huge role in the brain’s processing of motivation, pleasure and “REWARD”.

So, the “reward” piece is important because our brain sees these pictures of hot women and somehow activates this region of our brain, triggering reward stimuli, which in turn can cause us to discount our futures when it comes to money.

Conclusion

I found this study interesting in how men would take the lesser money today looking at the hot pictures while it didn’t affect men who looked at the unattractive women.

Obviously the hot pictures impacted the sexual selection of these guys.

I’m curious which amount of money I would choose if I were a participant in the study. I’m greedy so I’m sure I’d take the money today but that’s me.

It does make me think how my decision making would be affected in terms of purchasing something.

Say you go to a car dealership. How do you think you’d negotiate with a very attractive female salesperson as opposed to an unattractive female or a guy?

Just a little food for thought.

Feel free to comment below.