International   

The making of a risky gamble

WASHINGTON: A new brain-scan study may help explain what is going through the minds of many financial titans when they take risky monetary gambles: sex.

When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make larger financial gambles than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such as a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, researchers reported. The pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken.

“You have a need in an evolutionary sense for both money and women. They trigger the same brain area,” said Camelia Kuhnen, a Professor of Finance at Northwestern University who conducted the study with a Stanford University psychologist.

Their research appears in the peer-reviewed journal NeuroReport.

The study involved only 15 heterosexual young men at Stanford University. It focussed on the sex-and-money hub, the V-shaped nucleus accumbens, which sits near the base of the brain and plays a central role in what is experienced as pleasure.

When that hub was activated by the erotic images, the men were far more likely to bet high on a random chance game that would earn them either a dollar or a dime. Each man made more than 50 gambles under brain scans.

Stanford psychologist Brian Knutson, a lead author of the study, says it is all about the power of emotion and arousal and financial decisions. The trigger does not have to be sex — it could be chocolate or a winning lottery ticket.

“It didn’t matter if the sexy woman didn’t tell you anything about the odds of winning a roulette game,” Mr. Knutson said. “What really matters is that the sexy woman is having an emotional impact. That bleeds over into your financial decisions.”

The link between sex and greed goes back hundreds of thousands of years, to men’s evolutionary role as provider or resource gatherer to attract women, said Kevin McCabe, Professor of economics, law and neuroscience at George Mason University, who was not part of the study. “Risk-taking is a natural way of increasing your relative success, but, of course, there’s a downside to it: what we’re seeing right now in the economy,” he said.

One study at Harvard University found a link between higher testosterone levels and financial risk-taking. — AP

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Campaigning picks up for Nepal’s elections
LTTE losing control of Madu area, says Army Chief
Support Green Olympics initiative: Hu
Global warming continues, says U.N.
These superdelegates could make the difference
List of war criminals announced
Woman Afghan MP vows to return
Another poor year for overseas aid: OECD
The making of a risky gamble
A taste of poverty for the rich
Visa on arrival planned

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu