Mental Health Notes

Blame Sexy Women For The Crappy Economy

by Alicia Sparks, NAMI Affiliation Leader on April 29th, 2008

Haha, not really. Well…at least, I don’t think so?

According to research conducted and led by Northwestern University finance professor Camelia Kuhnen and Stanford psychologist Brian Knutson, sex and money trigger the same area of our brains - the V-shaped nucleus accumbens, or, our brains’ pleasure center.

During the research, which involved 15 heterosexual men (no women were involved in the study because the researchers thought it would be more difficult to find erotic images that appealed to each woman - we’re much pickier, you know), it became clear that the men were more likely to take big financial risks after being shown images of sexy women than they were after being shown images of not-so-sexy items such as, say, staplers, and images of scary things like snakes. (Of course, I know a few unique characters who actually find snakes sexy, but, I digress.)

In USA Today’s Sex on the brain of financial risk takers, George Mason University professor of economics, law and neuroscience Kevin McCabe commented, “Risk-taking is a natural way of increasing your relative success, but, of course, there’s a downside to it, what we’re seeing right now in the economy.”

My take?

Make sure there’s not a hottie within a 5-mile radius the next time you head to Wall Street, Vegas, or any car lot.

Ooh, would ya look at that? Mental Health Notes is getting risque. The above image belongs to Powderruns and is being used according to these Creative Commons attributions.

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POSTED IN: Doctors & Scientists, Enviromental Factors, Men, Sites of Interest, Women