Photo: Randy Faris/Corbis
Here’s a useful application of research funding. The Journal of Consumer Psychology just published a study called, “What a feeling! touching sexually laden stimuli makes women seek rewards.”
The study found that the relationship between money and sex works in unexpected ways. When women merely touched boxers in a department store, as opposed to seeing them, the sexy stimuli activated the brain’s reward center and “prompts pre-programmed consummatory Pavlovian responses that promote approaching economic rewards.” Men don’t even have to be wearing them, and women are so aroused they want to blow their paychecks all over the department store. Presumably a follow-up study on what happens when we handle tighty-whities is still awaiting funding.
