Beauty and the brain

gzlaser

JUST the fleeting glimpse of an attractive woman is all it takes to ruin a man's decision-making skills, Belgian researchers claimed.

The more testosterone coursing through the man's veins, the worse he is affected, they say.

This may be the first scientific explanation of why sending seductive women to disrupt enemies has been a widely-used historical tactic. And why it still works today.

It probably also explains King Kong's sad death: as \"beauty killed the beast\".

Bram van den Bergh and Siegfried Dewitte at 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 they found that the more testosterone a man had, the worse he acted in the tests, they report in the Belgian journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society.

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 it is found more commonly in men than women.

\"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,\" said Dewitte.

The researchers are conducting tests to search for a similar effect in women. But so far they have failed to find a visual stimulus that changes their decision-making behaviour.

Does the new finding indicate that men are totally prone to a beautiful girl?

Not really, researchers say.

\"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,\" said Dewitte.