[educationonlines]

How to test a man's decision-making: show him a sexy woman
Email Print Normal font Large

font By Ian Sample, London
April 20, 2006

A GLIMPSE of an alluring woman is all it takes to ruin a man's

decision-making skills, and the more testosterone coursing through his veins, the worse the problem gets,

researchers say.

The finding is unwelcome confirmation that those most likely to be in a position of power

are most susceptible to the subtle influences of the opposite sex.

Bram van den Bergh and Siegfried Dewitte,

of the University of Leuven in Belgium, set 44 student volunteers aged 18 to 28 a financial game to test how they

reacted to fair play. The game required the students to split into pairs. Before half of the games, one of each pair

was shown images of a sexy woman or asked to rate how much they liked a variety of lingerie.

The results

showed that men exposed to what the researchers call "sexual cues" accepted unfair play far more than men who were

not. The researchers later ranked the men according to their testosterone levels and found that the more

testosterone a man had the worse he fared in the tests, they report in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society

B."We all think we are rational beings, but our research suggests … that people with high testosterone levels are

very vulnerable to sexual cues. If there are no cues around, they behave normally, but if they see sexual images

they become impulsive," Dr Dewitte said. "It's a tendency, but these people are not powerless to fight it. Hormone

levels are one thing, but we can learn to deal with it."

Testosterone levels were gauged by measuring the

ratio of the index finger to the ring finger. A low value, suggesting a ring finger longer than the index finger, is

a result of high testosterone and is found more commonly in men than women.

The researchers are conducting

tests to search for a similar effect in women, but have so far failed to find a visual stimulus that alters their

decision-making behaviour.

GUARDIAN

[Haftdrarp]

This makes sense. Single,

unattached men supposedly have higher average testosterone levels than married, attached men do. In a natural,

biological environment, older males tend to get the females and younger males tend to go stag for a few years.

Older males provide more stable leadership in social groups, so their decision-making is more reasoned and

dependable (which says a great deal about all the young Bush-bashers, but I digress).

The military has an old

saying: You need young men to take ground and old men to hold it.

That is, younger men are more willing to take

insane risks, whereas older men are more capable of fighting off insane young men.

[fd8IIys2]

They obviously havent shown any

of the women in this study a picture of a credit card and a department store.