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Arch Sex Behav (2013) 42:331333 DOI 10.1007/s10508-013-0069-1
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Neurobiological Aspects of the Effects of Anticipation of Interaction with a Female on Male Cognitive Performance
Martin Kavaliers Elena Choleris
Published online: 15 January 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
It is well-established that sex-related cues have a signicant impact on male behavior. A growing body of evidence indicates that sexual motivation and augmented arousal elicited by females or their cues leads males to make poorer choices and take riskier decisions. Thisis likely associated witha shift and/or impairment in cognitive performance. For example, mens cognitive performance, as measured by a working memory task, is reduced and more impulsive after a short interaction with a woman (Karremans, Verwijmeren, Pronk, & Reitsman, 2009). Brief exposure of men to photos and videos of women engaged in sexual activity has also been associated with poorer performance on a cognitive go/no go task (Macapagal, Janssen, Fridberg, Finn, & Heiman, 2011). Similarly, heterosexual male students made poorer and risk-ier decisions, including those associated with HIV infection, after viewing sexual cartoons (Ariely & Lowenstein, 2006). Likewise, sexual images reduced aversive disgust responses to sex-related and non-sex-related disgust cues (Stevenson, Case, & Oaten, 2011). Sexual photos of women and erotic images have also been shown to lead to men making poorer and riskier nancial decisions (Wilson & Daly, 2004). These riskier decisions may facilitate sexually motivated behavior with mens responses being shifted from the longer term potentially detrimental consequences of their choices and focused on the immediate that is associated with the availability of a possible sexual partner.
EvidencerecentlypresentedbyNauts,Metzmacher,Verwijmeren,Rommeswinkel, and Karremans (2012) suggests that just the mere anticipation of an interaction with a woman can also impair menscognitive performance.They stagedsituations involvingeitherapseudo-interactioninwhichafemaleexperimenter was ostensibly observing a male and sending them instant messages or where men were told that they would be observed by a woman. In both scenarios, men displayed poorer and more impulsive behavior as assessed by a Stroop color naming task, suggesting that mere anticipation of an interaction with a female had a detrimental cognitive effect.
This view is supported by the results of prior and ongoing ecologicallyrelevantinvestigationswithnon-humanspecies, which have demonstrated that just cues associated with a female affects male cognitive performance. Male mice that were briey exposed to either...