Staring at naked women makes you smarter: Study

[mooeypoo]

As usual with pop-media, the title is a tad bombastic; the effect seems to be that the brain takes less processing time with nude bodies than it does with clothed ones, which I guess makes a lot of sense. There's less to analyze.

 

Still, it was too good not to share.

 

http://cnews.canoe.c...3/19013771.html

 

Researchers at the University of Tampere and Aalto University showed volunteer men and women photos of models in varying stages of undress.

 

Before all you women in sensible shoes cry "sexist pig!", I hasten to add the models also were male and female.

 

The volunteers' electrical brain activity was monitored.

 

Results appear in the current edition of the science journal PLoS One.

 

They make me proud to work for this newspaper, to share space with such brain food as the SUNshine Girl.

 

Professor Jari Hietanen reports the less clothes the models wore, the quicker each volunteer's grey matter kicked into action.

 

This may have roots in how our cave-man ancestor identified a potential mate. It was easier if they were naked.

 

"In less than 0.2 seconds, the brain processes pictures of nude bodies more efficiently than clothed bodies," Professor Hietanen says.

 

"Responses were the strongest when the participants looked at (nudes), the second strongest to bodies in swimsuits, and the weakest to fully clothed bodies."

 

 

 

If anyone can find the original science study, I will be happy to stare at it.

[michel123456]

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024408

[Moontanman]

Hey anyone want to see me nekked?... no wait I'm not a woman... but I'll get a moontan in a heart beat....

[pantheory]

Concerning the link michel posted:

 

We found that the N170 amplitude was larger to opposite and same-sex nude vs. clothed bodies

I hope that I would not be spending extra time and interest concerning same-sex nude bodies. Maybe the volunteers had more bisexual interests than normal

 

But I always knew the part about staring at naked girls making one smarter, since I was very young

//

Edited December 6, 2011 by pantheory

[imatfaal]

Concerning the link michel posted:

 

 

I hope that I would not be spending extra time and interest concerning same-sex nude bodies. Maybe the volunteers had more bisexual interests than normal

 

But I always knew the part about staring at naked girls making one smarter, since I was very young

//

 

 

But why would you hope that? The appreciation and lingering upon the naked body of someone of the same sex is nothing to be ashamed of, to be feared, or to be guarded against.

[Dekan]

The word "naked" - by and of itself - excites interest.

 

Here is a smart prediction - this OP will get a huge number of views, because it has "naked" in its title.

 

You see if I'm not right!

[JohnB]

I really don't see how this works.

 

When I look at naked women I find the blood drains from the brain to other parts of the body. Surely this leads to oxygen starvation for the brain thereby lowering brain function?

[michel123456]

Reminds me the famous quote

"God gave us a penis and a brain, but not enough blood to use both at the same time.” – Robin Williams

[mooeypoo]

The word "naked" - by and of itself - excites interest.

 

Here is a smart prediction - this OP will get a huge number of views, because it has "naked" in its title.

 

You see if I'm not right!

 

I resent the implication that I will ever use a bombastic popular-science slightly misleading title just to get traffic to my article.

 

 

The magazine invented this entirely accurate and completely scientific title, as usual for an online magazine! I just decided to take advantage of it.

 

 

 

[Moontanman]

Ok, lets do a study, me and Mooeypoo will take one for the team and let every one look at nekked pics of us and see if the viewers become more intelligent.... hey, it's a slow day....

[mooeypoo]

Ok, lets do a study, me and Mooeypoo will take one for the team and let every one look at nekked pics of us and see if the viewers become more intelligent.... hey, it's a slow day....

 

We should do this double blinded.

I'll go take pictures of Phi, Cap'n and Hypervolent_Iodine, and mix them up so no one knows who's which.

[hypervalent_iodine]

I think the mystery of which photo is which will become glaringly apparent by the responses of the first couple of participants. No amount of informed consent can prepare a person for a candid Phi shot. Or so I'm told.

[Moontanman]

Damn, i wanted to get nekked for science.....

[pantheory]

But why would you hope that? The appreciation and lingering upon the naked body of someone of the same sex is nothing to be ashamed of, to be feared, or to be guarded against.

I think my meaning was when naked pictures were put in front of me concerning naked men and clothed men, that I expect that my brain would not show more unusual activity when the men were naked -- as it would when women were naked. This is not to say that I have had little experience looking at naked women

//

Edited December 6, 2011 by pantheory

[mooeypoo]

I think my meaning was when naked pictures were put in front of me concerning naked men and clothed men, that I expect that my brain would not show more unusual activity when the men were naked -- as it would when women were naked. This is not to say that I have had little experience looking at naked women

//

 

The research did not check the level of your arousal, if you go over the paper you'll see it checked how quickly the brain identifies the object. This makes sense, I guess, since naked people have less details to them for our brain to consider when identifying.

 

Therefore, same-sex or opposite-sex has no bearing here, though I do agree it could be interesting to check *IF* it's a factor.

[iNow]

We should do this double blinded.

I'll go take pictures of Phi, Cap'n and Hypervolent_Iodine, and mix them up so no one knows who's which.

If you're sharing naked pictures of all three of them, I'm hoping to be triple blind.

[michel123456]

I resent the implication that I will ever use a bombastic popular-science slightly misleading title just to get traffic to my article.

 

 

The magazine invented this entirely accurate and completely scientific title, as usual for an online magazine! I just decided to take advantage of it.

 

 

 

I begin wondering maybe all this is simply a trick to bring some publicity to the University.

[Daedalus]

I'm happy to report what I've always suspected is true. The SUNshine Girl makes you smarter. It's now a scientific fact.

 

Looking At Page 3 Makes You Brainy, the headline proclaims. "Scientists (have) discovered that looking at pics of the likes of Lacey, Keeley and Rhian makes the brain react quicker," the paper says.

What I really want to know is if this truly makes you smarter in that your overall brain function speeds up for tasks other than looking at naked people. I have no doubts that our brain activity increases due to excitation and pattern recognition of viewing a naked person. But, can we really say that this activity is making us smarter and increasing our overall ability to think faster? I highly doubt this is the case because the article Michel123456 posted only talks about elevated levels of N170.

 

 

I hope that I would not be spending extra time and interest concerning same-sex nude bodies.

According to the research article, male subjects are more interested in the opposite sex than women. Also, sexual preference "migt be modulating the N170 responses to nude bodies".

 

In Experiments 2 male subjects exhibited larger the N170 responses to all opposite-sex compared to same-sex human stimuli, whereas in Experiment 1 this bias towards opposite-sex stimuli was restricted to nude bodies only. For female participants, the stimulus sex had no effect on N170 responses. These findings are compatible with the prevailing view of sexual responsiveness suggesting greater discrimination of physiological responses to sexually arousing opposite-sex vs. same-sex stimuli among males than females [42], [45], [46], [51], [52]. Comparison of the results between those participants who considered themselves as 'not at all' homosexual and those who considered themselves as at least slightly homosexually oriented suggested that the participant's sexual orientation might be modulating the N170 responses to nude bodies.

Edited December 6, 2011 by Daedalus

[mooeypoo]

Daedalus, those are good points, but I'm not entire sure what this means:

 

 

Comparison of the results between those participants who considered themselves as 'not at all' homosexual and those who considered themselves as at least slightly homosexually oriented suggested that the participant's sexual orientation might be modulating the N170 responses to nude bodies.

 

Were there more gay woman than gay men in that study? Shouldn't they have checked the sexual orientation before the experiment(s) and made sure to include a balanced number?

[Daedalus]

Were there more gay woman than gay men in that study? Shouldn't they have checked the sexual orientation before the experiment(s) and made sure to include a balanced number?

Mooey you make an excellent point. Unfortunately they didn't specify the number of participants that had one sexual preference vs. another. However, the article suggests that they did take sexual preference into consideration. Whether or not they made an attempt to choose a large enough group which contained a diverse spread of sexuality is unknown.

 

Experiment 1:

Participants.

 

Fifteen healthy male volunteers with normal or corrected-to-normal vision participated in the experiment (age: M = 28.27; SD = 8.30; range 20–47 years). One of the participants was left-handed and all the others were right-handed.

 

 

Experiment 2:

Participants.

 

Thirty-two (16 females) healthy volunteers with normal or corrected-to-normal vision participated in the experiment (age M = 24.47, SD = 8.32, range 19–66 years). One of the males was left-handed while all the other participants were right-handed. The EEG data of one male participant were not recorded because of technical problems.

It would seem as though they either are not listing the sexual preferences or did not conduct the study to initially consider the effects of varying sexuality.

 

 

Immediately after the SCR and ERP measurements, participants rated their experiences of valence and arousal while viewing the face, body and car stimuli using the SAM (Self-Assessment Manikin [49]). After this the electrodes were removed and the participants were allowed to clean themselves. Finally, participants completed The Sell Assessment of Sexual Orientation –questionnaire [50]. This questionnaire measures sexual attraction towards males and females, amount of sexual activity with males and females, and sexual identity (homo/heterosexuality). For assessing our participants' sexual orientation, we analyzed answers to an item where the participants were asked to rate their degree of homosexuality on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all homosexual; 7 = extremely homosexual).

I stand corrected. They did list the method they used to determine sexuality. Unfortunately, they did not choose a balance between sexuality. They could've obtained any mix of sexuality and therefore their statement regarding the participants sexual orientation affecting levels of N170 is inconclusive:

 

Comparison of the results between those participants who considered themselves as 'not at all' homosexual and those who considered themselves as at least slightly homosexually oriented suggested that the participant's sexual orientation might be modulating the N170 responses to nude bodies.

However, the statement suggests that the levels of N170 were different for those who are heterosexual vs. those who are homosexual and varying degrees thereof. A larger study would be needed which ensured the sexuality of each group of participants to validate the claim.

Edited December 6, 2011 by Daedalus

[TonyMcC]

It seems it was thought necessary to check and record whether the male participants were left or right handed. One has to wonder what actions were observed to determine this preference.

[Daedalus]

It seems it was thought necessary to check and record whether the male participants were left or right handed. One has to wonder what actions were observed to determine this preference.

 

Pherhaps it has something to do with the following bolded remark from the article ; )

 

Immediately after the SCR and ERP measurements, participants rated their experiences of valence and arousal while viewing the face, body and car stimuli using the SAM (Self-Assessment Manikin [49]). After this the electrodes were removed and the participants were allowed to clean themselves.

[pantheory]

The research did not check the level of your arousal, if you go over the paper you'll see it checked how quickly the brain identifies the object. This makes sense, I guess, since naked people have less details to them for our brain to consider when identifying.

 

Therefore, same-sex or opposite-sex has no bearing here, though I do agree it could be interesting to check *IF* it's a factor.

Thanks for your great interpretation mooeypoo but I came away with a different impression concerning this study, concluding that concentration on the nude form variations of the opposite sex slowly but steadily improves one's I.Q. I believe this to be true based upon personal experiences and a lifetime of continuing "related studies" in the field of prurient psychological "bendings." As evidence to support my hypothesis I would like to perform a double blindfolded study involving only female participants, paying for volunteers and personal testaments concerning improved mental acuity.

//

Edited December 7, 2011 by pantheory

[Daedalus]

I came away with a different impression concerning this study, concluding that concentration on the nude form variations of the opposite sex slowly but steadily improves one's I.Q.//

I'm not convinced that N170 has much effect, if any, on ones I.Q. score. Wikipedia states:

 

The N170 is a component of the event-related potential that reflects the neural processing of faces.

 

When potentials evoked by images of faces are compared to those elicited by other visual stimuli, the former show increased negativity 130-200 ms after stimulus presentation. This response is maximal over occipito-temporal electrode sites, which is consistent with a source located at the fusiform and inferior-temporal gyri. The N170 generally displays right-hemisphere lateralization and has been linked with the structural encoding of faces^[1].

 

...

 

The N170 was first described by Shlomo Bentin and colleagues in 1996^[2], who measured ERPs from participants viewing faces and other objects. They found that human faces and face parts (such as eyes) elicited different responses than other stimuli, including animal faces, body parts, and cars.

 

 

The article by CNews, Staring at naked women makes you smarter: Study, is highly misleading and an example of bad journalism which demonstrates a misunderstanding to the nature of the study and its conclusions.

 

I'm happy to report what I've always suspected is true. The SUNshine Girl makes you smarter. It's now a scientific fact.

The article attempts to justify public nudity by relating the increased electrical activity in the brain caused by viewing naked people to mental health and improved I.Q.

 

Imagine how quick-witted you'd be if the SUNshine Girl was topless like the Page 3 Girls of our British namesake.

 

...

 

When I was editor-in-chief, she did get tantalizingly close to topless. One memorable time, a pair of suspenders was the only difference. The corporate brass were unhappy with me. But I recall our readers seemed especially smart that day.

 

...

 

It's the least we can do in the name of mental health and readers' IQ.

Even though I have no problem with nudity and must confess that I enjoy seeing a beautiful woman naked , I feel that this type of journalism, even though it is fun to read, can cause more harm than good. Especially since the journalist is misleading the reader to believe that the results of the study suggests that viewing nudity will make you smarter.

 

IQ scores are used in many contexts: as predictors of educational achievement or special needs, by social scientists who study the distribution of IQ scores in populations and the relationships between IQ score and other variables, and as predictors of job performance and income. The average IQ scores for many populations have been rising at an average rate of three points per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect. It is disputed whether these changes in scores reflect real changes in intellectual abilities.

 

Whether or not IQ tests are an accurate measure of intelligence is open to debate. It is difficult to define exactly what constitutes intelligence; it may be the case that IQ scores represent a very specific type of intelligence.

Perhaps the journalist is referring to our sexual I.Q. in that seeing naked people will raise our intelligence of the different shapes / appearances of the opposite and / or same sex (i.e. men and women might not be so self-conscious of their particular parts if they knew what everyone else looked like in the birthday suits) .

 

I, of course, have no objections to being a part of your study Pantheory and would gladly help you develop experiments and gather data...

Edited December 7, 2011 by Daedalus

[pantheory]

Daedalus,

I, of course, have no objections to being a part of your study Pantheory and would gladly help you develop experiments and gather data...

Great minds think alike . Cool immodicom!

//

Edited December 7, 2011 by pantheory