Risk Takers Guided By Erotic Pictures
April 10th, 2008 by SexyGal
When young men are shown erotic pictures, they are more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such as a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, university researchers reported.
The arousing pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken.
The study involved 15 heterosexual young men at Stanford University. It focused on the sex and money hub, the V-shaped nucleus accumbens, which sits near the base of the brain and plays a central role in what you experience as pleasure.
When that hub was activated by the erotic images, the men were far more likely to bet high on a random chance game that would earn them either a dollar or a dime. Each man made more than 50 gambles under brain scans.
The link between sex and greed goes back hundreds of thousands of years, to men’s evolutionary role as provider or resource gatherer to attract women, said Kevin McCabe, professor of economics, law and neuroscience at George Mason University, who wasn’t part of the study.
The study conforms with recent research that indicates men shown a pornographic movie were more likely to make riskier sexual decisions. Another suggests straight men think less about their financial future after being shown pictures of pretty women.
This all makes sense to Harvard economist Terry Burnham, author of the book “Mean Genes.” Burnham said it could be all summed up in a famous line from the movie “Scarface.”
“In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.”
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