Guys take stupid risks when they see a pretty woman? Pretty women scramble men’s ability to assess the future:
Both male and female students at McMaster University were shown pictures of the opposite sex of varying attractiveness taken from the website “Hot or Not”. The 209 students were then offered the chance to win a reward. They could either accept a cheque for between $15 and $35 tomorrow or one for $50-$75 at a variable point in the future.Wilson and Daly found that male students shown the pictures of averagely attractive women showed exponential discounting of the future value of the reward. This indicated that they had made a rational decision. When male students were shown pictures of pretty women, they discounted the future value of the reward in an “irrational” way — they would opt for the smaller amount of money available the next day rather than wait for a much bigger reward.
Women, by contrast, made equally rational decisions whether they had been shown pictures of handsome men or those of average attractiveness.
“We have not elucidated the psychological mechanisms mediating our results,” says Margo Wilson. “But we hypothesise that viewing pictures of pretty women was mildly arousing, activating neural mechanisms associated with cues of sexual opportunity.”
Tommaso Pizzari, an evolutionary biologist at Leeds University, offers another possible explanation: “If there’s the prospect of getting a very attractive partner it may pay a man to take more risks than if an average partner was available.”
He told New Scientist: “If this is a response to sexual selection then you would expect men who are less attractive to take more risks. If you have many attractive potential partners then it does not pay to take risks. If you are less attractive, with few potential partners, then it pays to take risks.”