Why Men Lose Brain Power Around Pretty Women

WHY MEN LOSE BRAIN POWER AROUND PRETTY WOMEN


New research finally shows what we’ve all long suspected – men really do lose their minds around women they're attracted to! 

The study – published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology - showed that men who spent as little as a couple of minutes in the company of a female they were attracted to performed less well in brain function tests.

Apparently one of the researchers, a psychologist at Holland’s Radboud University, suggested the study because - when trying to impress an attractive woman - he couldn’t even remember his own address! 

In the study, heterosexual male volunteers performed a standard memory test then spent seven minutes chatting to male or female members of the research team before repeating the test.  Results revealed the men were slower and less accurate after trying to impress the women. Indeed, the more they fancied them, the worse their score. But when the task was repeated with a group of female volunteers, they did not get the same results. Memory scores stayed the same, whether they had chatted to a man or a woman.

The researchers concluded:
 

'Men's cognitive functioning may temporarily decline after an interaction with an attractive woman.'

They think that the volunteers used up so much of their brain function or 'cognitive resources' trying to impress beautiful women, they had little left for other tasks. This may be simply because men are programmed by evolution to prioritise thoughts on mating opportunities and ways to pass on their genes.  That is, on encountering attractive females, men are ‘reproductively focused’. 

However women, it is claimed, look for other attributes such as wealth, youth and kindness.

If mens’ brain function really is affected by the presence of attractive women, this surely has implications for males’ performance in mixed workplaces or even exam results in mixed-sex schools?

Have YOUR Say

Do YOU think men lose their minds in the presence of pretty women?  Do you think the same goes for females?  Leave a comment below.