Curing the male urge to blindly trust a pretty face
But thankfully researchers in Japan are at work on a solution to the problem, and according to a recent report, they may have identified a medication that can blunt the male urge to blindly trust the next pretty face.
The investigators gave minocycline (an antibiotic that’s been around since the early 1970s) or a placebo to 98 young men and then involved them in a simple game. Each man received 1,300 yen (about $13) and was told that he could give as much or as little of the money as he wanted to someone in the next room. And then the men were shown a photo of the mysterious “someone” next door, invariably an attractive young woman. Those receiving the placebo, investigators found, gave the money away freely — and the more attractive the woman’s face, the more money the men parted with. However, those on the antibiotic held their wallets close and proved every bit as stingy and distrustful as someone looking at an unsexy picture or no picture at all. As the authors wrote, a “sober” decision was reached, possibly because the drug acted by “reducing noise and other factors” such as “personality and arousal,” which can influence the decision-making process.
