Willpower

reason is that it’s another example of the irrational shortcuts taken by people whose self-control has been depleted by too many previous decisions or other exertions. A quick dose of glucose can counteract this short-term thinking, as researchers demonstrated by giving people a soft drink just before asking them to make choices between quick-but-small versus larger-but-later rewards.
    Another reason for choosing the quick cash emerged in an ingenious study by Margo Wilson and Martin Daly of McMaster University. These evolutionary psychologists began the experiment by asking young men and women to choose between a check dated tomorrow versus a check for a larger amount that could be cashed on a later date. Then, ostensibly as part of an experiment to measure preferences, the subjects were asked to rate photographs of people and cars. The photos of people were taken from hotornot.com , the Web site where people submit photos of themselves and are then rated for attractiveness on a 10-point scale. Some of the young men and women saw photos of the opposite sex who had already been rated on the Web site as very hot (above 9); some of the participants saw not-hot photos (around 5). Other participants rated pictures of cars, with some seeing hot cars and others looking at clunkers.
    Then everyone was asked once again to make choices between getting an immediate reward versus a larger reward later, and the researchers compared the answers to see if looking at the photos had changed any of the subjects’ preferences for rewards. The car pictures had no effect on the young men and only a slight effect on some of the women: Women who saw the hot cars became a little more likely to opt for the quick reward. One might speculate that seeing the shiny sports car made the young women a bit more eager for instant gratification, but the change was so small that the researchers declined to draw any conclusions from it. The women in the experiment were even less influenced by looking at photos of men. Their decision making didn’t change after looking at either the hot men or the not-sohot men. Nor did the men’s decision making change after looking at pictures of not-hot women.
    But there was one group that changed dramatically: Men who saw photos of hot women shifted toward getting an immediate reward instead of waiting for a larger payoff in the future. Apparently, the sight of an attractive woman makes men want cash right away. They focus on the present rather than the future. This effect is probably deeply rooted in the psyche and in the evolutionary past. Modern DNA research has revealed that most men in the past did not leave a line of descendants—their odds of reproducing were only half as high as the typical woman’s. (For every prolific patriarch like Genghis Khan, there were lots of other men whose genetic lines died out.) Men today are therefore descended from the minority of men who managed to reproduce, and their brains seem primed for a quick response to any opportunity to improve their reproductive odds. Other studies have shown that the sight of an attractive woman (but not an unattractive woman) activates the male brain’s nucleus accumbens, which is connected to the part of the brain activated by rewards like cash and sweet-tasting foods. In the past, there might well have been some evolutionary advantage in going for a quick display of resources upon seeing an attractive female; today, it might still be useful on occasions, especially if you think the woman’s decision might be affected by your owning a hot car. Clearly that’s the strategy of marketers of upscale cars and other goods. Advertising agencies figured out long ago that men are more likely to splurge on a luxury product if it’s shown next to a beautiful woman.
    But in general, nowadays this sort of short-term thinking is not a great strategy for life—and not even for attracting resource-conscious mates. As Madonna advised in “Material Girl”: “Only boys who save their pennies/Make my rainy day.” So if you are a male about to make any important financial decisions, focus on numerical figures, not female ones. And if you are an image-conscious executive whose willpower has already been depleted by making decisions all day long, you should definitely not make any plans for the evening—or for anything longer-term—after scanning the photos at the Emperors Club VIP.

5.
    WHERE HAVE ALL THE DOLLARS GONE?
    The Quantified Self Knows
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