How attractiveness of women affects your intelligence

27 Dec How attractiveness of women affects your intelligence

The presence of attractive people has been known to affect others in many ways.

A study shows that the presence of an attractive member of the opposite sex has the ability to lower your intelligence.

People become cognitively impaired in the presence of an attractive member of the opposite sex, the research found. And the drop in intelligence is particularly strong for men.

The more attractive the woman, the more men’s test scores plummeted, psychologists found. It may be because men are so concerned about making a good impression that they have few mental resources left over for anything else.

The research tested the prediction that mixed-sex interactions may temporarily impair cognitive functioning.

The Studies

Two studies, in which participants interacted either with a same-sex or opposite-sex other, demonstrated that men’s (but not women’s) cognitive performance declined following a mixed-sex encounter. In line with our theoretical reasoning, this effect occurred more strongly to the extent that the opposite-sex other was perceived as more attractive in the first study, and to the extent that participants reported higher levels of impression management motivation in the second study. Implications for the general role of interpersonal processes in cognitive functioning, and some practical implications, are discussed.

The study involved people talking to members of the opposite sex before completing cognitive tests.

Both sexes performed worse on the tests when they were trying to make a good impression on the other person. It made no difference whether or not they were already in a relationship or single.

However, men were more often struggling to make a good impression, so their cognitive powers weakened the most.

Impression management is no easy task for the human brain, as the authors explain: “…leaving a favorable impression on an opposite-sex partner may not always be easy.

Impression management requires careful monitoring and modifying of one’s own behavior to optimize the overall impression an individual wants make on the interaction partner, making it an effortful and cognitively demanding endeavor.

Research by Vohs and colleagues suggests that impression management indeed generally requires relatively high levels of cognitive control.”

The study was inspired by an experience of one of the study’s authors:

“Some time ago, one of the male authors was chatting with a very attractive girl he had not met before.

While he was anxious to make a good impression, when she asked him where he lived, he suddenly could not remember his street address.

It seemed as if his impression management concerns had temporarily absorbed most of his cognitive resources.”

Impression management

According to Wikipedia, impression management is a conscious or subconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event. They do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction. It was first conceptualized by Erving Goffman in 1969, and then was expanded upon in 1967. An example of impression management theory in play is in sports such as soccer. At an important game, a player would want to showcase themselves in the best light possible, because there are college recruiters watching. This person would have the flashiest pair of cleats and try and perform their best to show off their skills. Their main goal may be to impress the college recruiters in a way that maximizes their chances of being chosen for a college team rather than winning the game.

Impression management is usually used synonymously with self-presentation, in which a person tries to influence the perception of their image. The notion of impression management was first applied to face-to-face communication, but then was expanded to apply to computer-mediated communication. The concept of impression management is applicable to academic fields of study such as psychology and sociology as well as practical fields such as corporate communication and media.

Other ways women affect men

Pretty women make men impatient: Researchers have observed that simply looking at a good-looking woman decreases a man’s patience and willpower.

The study involved testing how likely participants were to “discount the future” after viewing pictures of attractive or unattractive members of the opposite sex. Discounting is choosing to receive a small sum of money tomorrow instead of a large one in the future.

The results of the study showed that men who looked at pictures of pretty women were more likely to choose the small sum of money. But men who looked at unattractive women primarily chose the larger sum.

Women also generally chose the larger sum regardless of whether or not the men they looked at were attractive.

Attractive women make men less happy about their relationships: How some men feel about their current relationship has a lot to do with whether or not you just saw or spent time with a good-looking woman (not theirs).

For this study, people interacted with strangers of the opposite sex. Sometimes their partners were especially attractive; other times, they were average-looking.

Next, the participants were asked to evaluate how they felt about their romantic relationships. While women weren’t affected by being exposed to attractive men, men generally reported feeling less satisfied with their relationships after being exposed to attractive women.

Men take undue risk to impress women: Australian researchers tested this idea when they observed groups of young men skateboarding. When there weren’t any girls around, the guys tended to play it safe and sane.

However, when the researchers asked pretty girls to show up and observe the skateboarders, they ended up taking more stupid risks and trying more impressive moves.

The researchers reported a field experiment with skateboarders that demonstrates that physical risk taking by young men increases in the presence of an attractive female. This increased risk taking leads to more successes but also more crash landings in front of a female observer. Further analyses suggest that this increase in risk taking is caused in part by elevated testosterone levels of men who performed in front of the attractive female.

The results suggest that men use physical risk taking as a sexual display strategy, and they provide suggestive evidence regarding possible hormonal and neural mechanisms.