Interacting with women can impair men's cognitive functioning | Hacker News Reader

Interacting with women can impair men's cognitive functioning

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19 pointspunchagan12 comments

They discovered that when talking one on one with a hot girl, most guys do not reason at their best!!

On other news, they also discovered that ice is cold and that windows is not virus-free.

I think I first heard it from Robbin Williams stand-up:

    God gave you a penis and a brain, and only enough blood to run one at a time

Any video hunters out there to provide the link? Also another variation:

    God gave us 2 heads and just enough blood to use one at a time

i think this occurs regardless of gender. extreme feelings, be they lust or jealousy or whatever, can trump reason. pretty obvious fact of being human.

First sentence:

Some time ago, one of the male authors was chatting with a very attractive girl he had not met before. While he was anxious to make a good impression, when she asked him where he lived, he suddenly could not remember his street address.

It's interesting that women aren't similarly affected by mixed-sex interactions. Coed education disadvantages men?

  >> Coed education disadvantages men?

There is some evidence that coed education can be detrimental to both men and women. http://www.singlesexschools.org/research-singlesexvscoed.htm

It has been suggested that some women fall behind in math in high school due to a desire to not appear too smart.

It's a long-running hot potato in education. The studies seem to swing all over the place (as do the attitudes of schools willing to "experiment" with the topic). A high level hop around the subject: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jun/25/schools.gender2

Aren't they? I've seen plenty of women get tongue tied around men they're attracted to.

It's likely a matter of it being socially acceptable for a woman to smile nervously and stare at the floor during courtship, so losing one's cool is a problem from a man's perspective, but is all part of the experience from a woman's.

Not according to the study.

I suspect that it is like with money: the lack of "interacting with women" may impair men's cognitive functioning much more severely.

That seems implausible to me.

The theory behind it is presented to quite a high level of detail in Cryptonomicon, almost to the point to make you believe it if you've ever gone through something like it.

The study claims to have "some interesting practical and theoretical implications, for example with regard to recently revived debates about single-sex vs. coed schools." Perhaps, but my impression is that the study consists of situations where the "confederates" are not previously acquainted, which would not likely be the case in a school setting.

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