NOW YOU UNDERSTAND WHY HE WAS STANDING ON HIS HEAD

Men Take More Risks Around Hot Chicks

It's official: Men act like idiots around beautiful women. According to new research published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal, guys are more likely to engage in dangerous "physical risk-taking" if they know an attractive member of the opposite sex is watching.

To find out whether men will risk life and limb to impress a woman, a team of psychologists at Australia's University of Queensland asked 96 male skateboarders, with an average age of 22, to demonstrate easy and difficult tricks. After a short break, they were asked to pull the same stunts while being filmed by a man, and then by an attractive 18-year-old woman. (An independent panel of 20 men had assessed her beauty before the experiment began.)

Following each stunt, the researchers took saliva samples and tested the skateboarders' levels of testosterone -- a male hormone that feeds sexual interest and is associated with increased competition. They found that when the charming teen assistant (who didn't know about the true nature of the experiment) was around, testosterone levels shot up. The skaters also attempted more complex stunts. And while they occasionally successfully completed these riskier tricks, they also suffered more crashes and accidents.

Professor Bill von Hippel, who led the study, suggested that the male urge to flirt with danger is a hangover from our cavemen ancestors. "Historically, men have competed with each other for access to fertile women, and the winners of those competitions are the ones who pass on their genes to future generations," he said. "Risk-taking would have been inherent in such a competitive mating strategy." Von Hippel argues that the skaters' risky behavior can be seen as "hormonally fueled advertisements of health and vigor aimed at potential mates, and signals of strength, fitness and daring intended to intimidate potential rivals."

This isn't the first study to link testosterone with increased risk-taking. Last summer, a paper by Paola Sapienza and colleagues at Northwestern University noted that MBA students with high levels of the hormone were more likely to make dicey investments than students with low testosterone levels. That piece of research led commentators at the Huffington Post and elsewhere to argue that the financial collapse could have been avoided if only the highly macho banking and brokerage sector employed more women, who have naturally lower levels of the hormone.

But von Hippel's research suggests that upping the number of women -- or at least attractive women -- on Wall Street could actually have the opposite effect. While female employees may place fewer dangerous bets, it's possible that their presence on the trading floor could encourage their eager-to-impress male co-workers to take even bigger gambles on the market. True, a bold "buy" order may not have the flair of a nollie 720 laser double heelflip. But testosterone's ancient power can work in many ways.


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