Scientists explain how babies, nudity and kittens in advertising affect our brains.
Psychologists and neuroscientists explain how the human brain perceives nudity, how it is influenced by babies, kittens and puppies on the Internet, and the role of a woman’s breasts in the mechanism of love and product promotion.
About the naked body
A person evaluates the minds of other creatures according to two criteria: a) the ability to feel and perceive and b) the ability to think and act. These parameters are not equivalent. The more sensitivity we give to someone, the less we value their ability to think and act. And vice versa. It’s a zero sum game.
What happens when a person takes off his clothes?? Scientists from Yale and the University of Maryland found this out through a series of experiments on their students. The subjects were shown photographs of two attractive young men, Erin and Aaron. One pair of photographs showed their faces. Another showed Aaron topless and Erin in a bikini.
After looking at the photographs, students were asked to describe Erin and Aaron. There were six questions in the questionnaire. Scientists asked about the ability to think and act (“How do you rate her/his willpower? Moral qualities? Ability to plan?") and the ability to feel and perceive ("What feelings does he/she experience?? Pleasure? Hunger? Wish?").
The answers to these https://jackbomcasino.co.uk/mobile-app/ questions said much more not about Erin and Aaron, but about the subjects themselves. When looking at the top pair of photographs, where only their faces were visible, students rated Erin and Aaron in terms of action. When they looked at the body they immediately switched to feelings. The same models, the same facial expressions – but the perception changed by 180 degrees.
In another experiment, students were sent to a dating site and asked to rate people first on their attractiveness, and then on their intellectual and strong-willed qualities, as in hiring. The same story repeated itself: the participants in the experiment assessed the people in the photographs either by sensuality/sensibility, or by intelligence and will.
Psychologists discovered a similar phenomenon—faceism—back in the 80s. Faceism is the media’s tendency to focus on faces when depicting men and on their bodies when depicting women. At the same time, people of any gender associate the former with intellect and will, and perceive the latter as inanimate sexual objects.
If you dig even deeper, you can remember the philosopher Kant, who said that those to whom our sexual appetite is directed turn into inanimate objects for us. Kant coined the term “objectification” (depersonification) for this. In reality, everything is somewhat more complicated. According to scientists from the Universities of Yale and Maryland, when looking at a naked body, it is not depersonification that occurs, but a redistribution of perception. We still perceive a person as an animated being, but in terms of feelings: pain, pleasure, desire.
And although everything is not as scary as Kant and psychologists of the 80s described, the redistribution of perception also has its consequences. The simplest example is the hiring of a woman by a male boss. At the slightest sexual interest, a man loses the ability to evaluate a woman’s business qualities. It’s amazing how little we need (just a piece of naked body) to switch to another wavelength.
About women’s breasts
Not long ago, neuroscientists Larry Young and Brian Alexander published the book “The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction”. It tells a lot of interesting things about what really lies behind our sexual behavior:
+ Of all mammals, only human males are aroused by female breasts. And human females are the only ones whose mammary glands enlarge as they grow older, regardless of pregnancy. Also we are the only ones who have sex face to face.
+ Women’s breasts as a switch for the male brain are not a myth or a joke. When seeing a woman’s bust, the pleasure centers in the male brain suppress the activity of the centers of rational thinking.
+ A woman’s love for a man developed from her love for children. When a baby is born, a woman’s brain releases the neurotransmitters oxytocin and dopamine. They stimulate milk production and create a feeling of pleasure when caring for the baby. The baby’s face, smell and voice are imprinted in the mother’s memory and associated with pleasant sensations.
When communicating with men, the same mechanism works. Stimulation of the breasts during sex causes releases of oxytocin and dopamine, as a result of which the partner’s face, smell and voice are associated with pleasure. A feeling of love arises (or strengthens).
About kittens and babies
The Internet has changed the life of the entire planet. Thanks to him, we have email, remote work, online stores, torrents and viral advertising. And trillions of photos and videos of killer kittens, puppies and babies. What good are they, other than a dose of good mood??
In 2009, Japanese scientists from Hiroshima University accidentally discovered that pictures of babies and young animals increased concentration. They double-checked their hypothesis with three experiments and found that this was indeed true. Children’s images cause a reflexive reaction of emotion, the mood improves, and this, in turn, leads to an increase in concentration.
So if you are caught scrolling through cute pictures instead of working, you can say with a clear conscience that you were engaged in cognitive self-tuning.