When it comes to looking at beautiful women, men just can't seem to help themselves.
This recent study by Harvard researchers shows that beautiful faces are almost like cocaine for men, setting off the brain's reward circuitry in a similiar fashion.
But when I suggested to people in an informal survey in the CBD that maybe this means that women shouldn't get upset when their husband or boyfriend looks at a beautiful woman, I got a mixed response. One woman said, "That's not even true. That is ridiculous. A man definitely said that."
Men's responses ranged from saying if they do look, they don't gawk, and others 'pleading the fifth' because their wife might be listening.
Researchers found in one particular group of men studied with brain imaging, known as functional MRI, they found "that only the attractive female faces set off the brain's reward circuitry."
According to the authors, "One goal of this study was to determine if beautiful faces, or a subgroup thereof, motivated behavior on one hand, while on the other producing reward circuitry activity when passively observed. It is not surprising that men like to watch beautiful women's faces; however, it was not obvious that this class of stimuli would activate the classical reward circuitry that has previously been associated with drug rewards, homeostatic rewards, and monetary rewards, all of which have direct physiological implications or can be readily transformed into goal-objects with physiological effects."
The research with another social stimulus, namely money, shows there is also activation of the human brain by monetary rewards. But the study says, "Although money and beautiful faces can both elicit motivated behaviors, money cannot elicit aesthetic evaluations. In contrast, it is possible that beautiful faces may stimulate both reward assessments and aesthetic assessments, each leading to different patterns of brain activity.
"Beauty in human faces has long been considered within the general category of aesthetic theory and only recently within the domain of biology and neuroscience. Recent research on facial beauty suggests that the perception of beauty is innate and universal across race and culture. The strong motivational influence of beauty has been shown in studies of labor markets suggesting that there is a 'beauty premium' and 'plainness penalty' such that attractive individuals are more likely to be hired, promoted, and to earn higher salaries than unattractive individuals."
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