Men Are Struck 'Dumb' By Beautiful Women

Chatting to an attractive woman is bad for a man's brain, according to a study.

It found that men perform less well in tests to measure brain function when they have just spent time with a woman they fancy.

And experts believe the reason may be guys use up so much of their "cognitive resources" trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.

The findings have implications for the performance of men who flirt with female colleagues in work, or even exam results in mixed-sex schools, researchers said.

Evolution
But women were not affected by chatting to a handsome man.

This may be because men are "programmed by evolution" to think more about mating opportunities.

In a report, the research team from the Netherlands said: "We conclude men's cognitive functioning may temporarily decline after interaction with an attractive woman." Psychologist Dr. George Fieldman, a member of the British Psychological Society, added: "When a man meets a pretty woman, he is what we call 'reproductively focused'.

"But a woman also looks for signs of other attributes, such as wealth, youth and kindness.

"Just the look of the man would be unlikely to have the same effect."

The psychologists at Radboud University in Holland carried out the study after one was so struck on impressing a pretty woman, he could not remember his address.

They said it was as if he was so keen to make an impression, he "temporarily absorbed most of his cognitive resources."

To see if other men were affected in the same way, they recruited 40 male heterosexual students.

Each one performed a standard test where they had to observe a stream of letters and memorize them.

The volunteers then spent seven minutes chatting to male or female members of the research team before repeating the test.

Men were slower and less accurate after trying to impress the women. The more they fancied them, the worse their score.

But when the task was repeated with a group of female volunteers, memory scores stayed the same.

The report was published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology.