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By Massimo Pigliucci | November 4th 2008 10:46 AM | 8 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
About Massimo

Massimo Pigliucci is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York.

His research focuses on the structure of evolutionary

...

View Massimo's Profile
Aristotle figured out pretty early on that human beings are by their nature constantly pulled by two opposing forces: on the one hand their propensity to go after immediate rewards, even though they are often deleterious for them (akrasia, or “weakness of the will”); on the other hand the necessity to work for their long term welfare (eudaemonia, loosely translated as “happiness” but better understood as flourishing).

This is, of course, the stuff of countless novels and movies, not to mention the reason people go to therapy (sometimes successfully coupling the artistic with real life, as in the case of Woody Allen). Yet, until recently there have been very few controlled studies assessing what in technical terms is known as “future discounting,” i.e. the idea that we might prefer a smaller but immediate reward to a larger but delayed one. More interestingly, little research has been done on how flexible human future discounting is, and in response to what kinds of circumstances our eudaemonic calculus may change.

But a few years ago Margo Wilson and Martin Daly of McMaster University in Canada began to address these issues systematically with the publication of a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (vol. 271, S177-179). Wilson and Daly wanted to know whether men and women would change their future discounting rate in response to visual stimuli, and in particular whether seeing pictures of attractive or non-attractive individuals of the opposite sex, or of “hot” vs. normal looking cars, would affect their discounting decisions. The discounting was measured by the frequency with which subjects would pass a smaller but more immediate monetary reward for a larger one to be delivered in the more distant future.

The results were fairly clear: men are indeed, as the title of the paper puts it, “inspired to discount the future” when presented with mildly arousing pictures of attractive women, but they were not so inclined when the women in the photos were not attractive. Women also showed a mild tendency to respond in the same way, but the difference between the two treatments was actually not statistically significant, meaning that it is clearly men who do most of the future discounting (or, in lay terms, are more likely to lose their minds in the presence of an attractive member of the opposite sex).

The results with the cars, however, were reversed: a “hot” car did not have any effect on the men’s propensity for future discounting, but it did influence women, whose discounting rate was much higher when a hot car was pictured in comparison to a boring looking one. Clearly, the old idea that a good way to attract women’s attention is to drive around in an attractive (and expensive) looking car does have scientific foundation…

Wilson and Daly point out that we also know of the neural correlates of these behaviors: brain scan experiments show that when men look at pretty women their nucleus accumbens lights up. This is the area of the brain associated with the evaluation of rewards, and it is connected directly to the orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region that deals with rewards from sweet food as well as money.

All of this makes much sense, but the question remains as to why on earth we would go for immediate rewards even when we realize that long-term ones are significantly better -- let’s call it the Aristotelian paradox. The most intriguing aspect of Wilson and Daly’s study is their suggestion that our future discounting rate is phenotypically plastic: that is, how much discounting we do depends on the environmental conditions. In a previous paper, the same authors argued that “the relatively short time horizons of criminal offenders, the poor and the young may not deserve pejorative terms like ‘myopia’ and ‘impulsivity,’ but instead reflect modulated future discounting in response to social and economic cues of the relative values of present and future goods and opportunities.” In other words, the more uncertain the future reward, the better off you are betting on the immediate one. And what can be more immediate than a good looking woman smiling right at you?

Comments

Stellare's picture
Men are shortsighted. Italian's excuse is not surprisingly women. How charming to toss in a little 'science' vocabulary as sweet toppings on that. ;-)

Bente Lilja Bye, I am looking at your pic, completely discounting future time! : )

Stellare's picture
Listen to what I say! - And you will stop looking. :-)

You miss the point Bente. As repulsed as I am by your sanctimonious attitude I still can't help staring at your picture.

Don't worry though because I've learned to easily objectify the female form so that I don't become obsessed with any one particular woman just due to her physique. I don't really want "you" per se just your body.

But of course I am just a big bad male so what do I know. You've got it all figured out anyway Bente. Never mind what I said.

I believe the context to be true. I suspect that it's all about the laws of nature, with the assumption that what makes us attractive to the opposite sex are those attributes identified unconsciously as those of a prospective healthy mate, suitable for reproduction. Beauty as an aphrodisiac, perhaps less on the "down-low" than the pheromones we hear about, is no less an ingredient in making our hearts go aflutter!

I think it's pretty obvious that it is true if you are a male. But really people of both sexes due pretty stupid things because of uncontrollable attraction. For men it just happens to be more visual stimulation than for women. How many men fall head over heal for older women with lots of power... not many. Men aren't as attracted to social status, power, rank as women.

Men don't need a scientific study to realize that they become distracted by the female form because they have been suffering through this since uncontrollable desire since childhood. Anyone want to guess why porn is so popular with men???

One thing that always bothers me with studies of this kind is the question of how generalizable the results are. I realize that part of the issue is that over-generalization works well for popular articles, but I imagine that there were plenty of men that didn't go for the immediate gratification--rather, I would expect that the number of men who went for immediate gratification in the context of attractive vs. non-attractive women was large enough to amount to whatever level of statistical significance the researches were using. But they way the results are portrayed suggests that gender differences that only exist in the aggregate are true of (all) men.

sleeprun's picture
...very kool article and much to digest..i'm going to pop back and forth with dum ideas....

...on generalizability of brain studies, i suspect that since there is not that much individual variation in brain function and response, or at least that we can measure now, the law of large numbers does not apply, the similarity with other mammal brains also bears out a more experimental than survey research model... results from one brain should suffice, unless gender differences are important, maybe age....

...indeed the tagging of others as "irrational" is patronizing, moralistic and silly...course it does feel good....

...the use by guys of objects for mating fitness displays is a bit tricky and multi-level...the "toys" are probably primarily used to desplay domiance over other males, not attract gurls.....however, i did see some research that gurls are attracted to guys that demonstrate social group dominance so...

....but guy stuff is mainly to put down other guys....including "owning" a hot gurl....

...actually a good way to attract gurls is to be perceived by them as attractive by their girl friends...for women it's pretty much all about access to group resources as mediated by other women and their immediate social network, e.g. Facebook, family...which makes sense if you're negotiating resources to raise kids...

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