Saturday, January 29, 2011

And in Related News...

Staring at women's boobs makes them worse at math.
...Gervais and her colleagues trained research assistants to do a quick up-and-down look at a person's body and to train their gaze at the other person's chest for a consistent period of a few seconds during conversations. It was harder than it sounds, Gervais said.

"For people that are doing this — even the men who are presumably doing this pretty frequently — actually having to slow down and do it is pretty hard," Gervais said. It was also somewhat awkward, she added ...The volunteers were told the study was about teamwork. After this briefing, each volunteer was assigned to an opposite-sex partner — actually a trained research assistant posing as another volunteer.

The research assistants then gave the real volunteers a five-question interview, ostensibly as part of the teamwork exercise. In some cases, the assistant started the interview by gazing from the volunteer's head to waist and back again, and then stared at the volunteer's chest for a few seconds between some questions. (Although the chest is a more sensitive area for women, men are becoming increasingly self-conscious about chest muscularity, the researchers explained.) In other cases, the assistant simply made eye contact. The volunteers then had 10 minutes to complete 12 math problems.
 Tough work, but somebody has to do it.  I never got a cushy job like that in college.
The results revealed that men’s scores were not affected whether or not they got an objectifying glance from a woman before the math test. But women whose male partners objectified them scored lower than those whose partners didn't gaze at their bodies. The non-objectified women scored an average of 6 out of 12 questions correct, while objectified women scored an average of just under 5.
John Kerry objectifying women
"Objectified" vs. "Non-Objectified."  I think we see this authors lack of objectivity shining through.  Anyway, this must be because the women were flustered by the unwanted attention, right?
Bad math scores notwithstanding, the ogled women were more likely than the non-ogled women to say they wanted to interact with their partners more.
Nope, they were being distracted by a possible opportunity...

Important follow up research needed: As women's breasts expand, are their math scores dropping?  Are math scores and breast sizes inversely correlated?
 
John Kerry picture found at this tribute to ogling...

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