The Cheerleader Effect: What Men Do to Impress

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The holiday season brings with it the usual assortment of college bowl games, from the classic Rose, Orange and Sugar, all the way to the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl and, my favorite, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. Each contest involves the migration across the country of hordes of players, coaches, alumni boosters, band members, mascots—and, of course, cheerleaders. Remarkably, recent science suggests that if this final group weren't included, it would probably alter the quality of play.

All because males can be kind of pathetic.

When women are present or when men are prompted to think about women, they act differently, research shows. Well, duh. But in unexpected ways. A 2008 study in the journal Evolutionary Psychology showed that in the mere presence of women as witnesses, men become more likely to jaywalk and to wait until the last second to dash on to a bus. This reflects, no doubt, the well-known belief among men that jaywalking means you're a Roman gladiator of irrepressible virility. As I said, pathetic.

Over the past several years, the pattern has been found repeatedly in studies of male behavior published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the British Journal of Psychology and elsewhere. In some cases, a woman is present; in others, men look at pictures of a woman's face or her legs; in still others, men list what they find to be sexually arousing (versus things that make them happy). In a 2011 paper in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, this last technique is called, with a straight face, "inducing mating goals."

There's nothing like pretty women to motivate men.