Proving an Age-Old Advertising Gimic

Most advertisers have known for a long time that "sex sells" especially when it comes to men; but Brian Knutson, assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University designed a study to prove if the concept really has merit. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of each man's head in the study, he was able to monitor an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which from the work of previous research was shown to be active when a participant was about to take a financial risk. Another area of the brain known as the insula was shown to be active when a person was choosing to avoid the risk. The men were shown pictures of three sets of stimuli, positive, negative and neutral. The "positive" picture consisted of erotic photos of a man and woman, the "negative" was of snakes and spiders and the neutral picture showed office supplies. (Just in case someone might have a particular aversion to office supplies, the men were asked to rate the pictures after the experiment.) After viewing each picture, the participants had to quickly decide on a 50-50 gamble in which they had to either bet a dollar or a dime. The results of the study showed, needless to say, that the men tended to bet the dollar more often when the erotic pictures were shown, and their active nucleus accumbens confirmed it.

"We knew that we should be looking at [the nucleus accumbens] from the previous study. But what we didn't know is whether we could somehow control the activation in that area by presenting some completely irrelevant stimulus," Knutson said. "And whether that would change activation in that area and actually change behavior."