Cognition and Lingerie
Well, these two may seem to be strange ahem, bed fellows, but recent research suggests an intriguing link. This item seemed so odd, that I’m going to name names. Carol Kirshner – web mistress and researcher – is the only person in the world who could possibly have exposed me to this piece of research. The whole thing so shocked me that it has taken me until now to be able to report to you, gentle reader.
Carol found this blog item which had the wonderful title “Lingerie sharpens the financial mind.” It followed a report by the BBC , which sported a less racy title. Sad to say, some of the news reports got it wrong. You can read the abstract of the paper, and there’s a nice analysis of the paper by Dr. Petra Boynton.
The study did not actually say that men can’t function if they catch a glimpse of a scantily clad female. It was more subtle than that, and as Dr. Boynton points out, there are many reasons for being cautious about the findings. In actual fact the data seem to indicate that a glimpse of one of the lingerie pictures actually enhanced the men’s rational decision making.
Now there’s a thought….
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