A new brain-scan study was conducted at Stanford University, using functional magnetic resonance imaging scanners to examine risk taking. And, it seems the research might even help explain what’s going on in the minds of financial experts when they make risky financial decisions… Yes, you guessed it, its sex!
In the study, Camelia Kuhnen, a North-western University finance Professor, and Brian Knutson, a Stanford University Psychologist, showed pictures to heterosexual young men, and found that they were more likely to take larger financial gambles when they were shown erotic pictures, than pictures of something scary such as a snake, or something neutral such as a stapler.
The research 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 people experience as pleasure.
Each man made more than 50 gambles under brain scans, during which it was found that when the nucleus accumbens was activated by erotic imagery, the men were far more likely to bet high on a random chance game that would earn them either a dollar or a dime.
The arousing pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken. However, the flip side was that the photos of snakes and spiders activated a portion of the brain often associated with pain, fear and anger, and in those cases, people were more likely to bet lower.
Camelia Kuhnen said:
You have a need in an evolutionary sense for both money and women. They trigger the same brain area
Brian Knutson commented:
It’s all about the power of emotion and arousal and our financial decisions. The trigger doesn’t have to be sex - it could be chocolate or a winning lottery ticket.
It didn’t matter if the sexy woman didn’t tell you anything about the odds of winning a roulette game, what really matters is that the sexy woman is having an emotional impact. That bleeds over into your financial decisions.
Kuhnen said the same link could hold true for women, but they didn’t test them because it’s more difficult to find an erotic image that would appeal to many different heterosexual women, compared to heterosexual men.
The research appears in the journal NeuroReport.
This study backs up recent research which indicated that men shown a pornographic movie were more likely to make riskier sexual decisions, and other research suggesting that straight men think less about their financial future after being shown pictures of pretty women.
Posted by Jonathan in Psychology, Sociology