Fantasizing about sex gets more than just your juices flowing—it also boosts your analytical thinking skills. Daydreaming about love, on the other hand, makes you more creative, according to a study published in the November 2009 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Previous research suggests that our problem-solving abilities change depending on our states of mind and that love—a broad, long-term emotion—triggers global brain processing, a state in which we see the big picture, make broad associations and connect disparate ideas. Sex, on the other hand—more specific and here and now—initiates more local processing, in which the brain zooms in and focuses on details. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam, University of Groningen and Jacobs University Bremen wondered whether thinking about love might actually help people perform better on creative tasks, whereas imagining sex might prime people to do better on tasks requiring analytical thinking.
The researchers asked 30 subjects to imagine a long, loving walk with their partners and asked 30 others to think of casual sex with someone they did not love. Then they gave the subjects cognitive tests. As predicted, the love-primed ones performed much better on creative tasks and scored worse on analytical questions, whereas the reverse was true of those who thought about sex. The researchers also subliminally primed a separate group of subjects to think about love or sex and got similar results.
“I was surprised about the strength of the effects,” says author Jens Förster, a social psychologist at the University of Amsterdam. The researchers wonder whether the “big picture” perspective that lovebirds share strengthens their relationship, too, by helping couples overlook personal weaknesses and daily hassles.
This article was originally published with the title How Fantasies Affect Focus.
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9 Comments
Add CommentWhat about thinking about sex with a loved one?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd what of thinking about sex with a loved one?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't see how the authors can attribute the results so hastily to sex and love... It is perhaps the "big picture perspective" that leads to better creativity, and the "here and now perspective" that leads to better analytical skills, and not necessarily love and sex... If they did a simple experiment with one group daydreaming about something (anything), and another group doing the chores, I suspect they would get similar results.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suspect most students know this by experience
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder what is connection between the two phenemenon. Fantacising sex only makes one loose ones fluids which is harmful anyway. For creativity improvement there may be several other ways
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis note struck a chord in my memory about a phenomenon I experienced I repeatedly years ago. Wenner wrote that fantasizing about sex gets more than just your juices flowingit also boosts your analytical thinking skills. And as the author of the reported research paper , Jens F�rster, was reported to have said, the effect was very strong, and I often wondered about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe research paper suggests that fantasizing about love enhances holistic thinking and creative thought, but in contrast sexual stimulation revs up analytic thinking.
As a student and young professional, I spent much time studying or researching in a library. (Now retired and past the age of needing to do that, I do my explorations on the internet.) But it often happened back then that at some table nearby by would be sitting a disconcertingly attractive young woman. Her presence would often provoke me to romantic fantasies, as well others of a more explicitly interactive variety.
Heres what I noticed: When I succeeded in taking my mind off the woman and got myself back to work, I would remain in state of arousal that would provoke creative ideas, usually connected to the subject I was pursuing. I didnt notice any difference in this regard from the effects of fantasies of romance and those of sex. Both types turned up my mental energy.
Did anything useful come form the increased creative energy, any new insight or understanding? Not often. Usually the efficiency of my work was cut considerably, as I would be distractible and thinking of extraneous things. But on at least one occasion, when I happened to be reading a research paper that reported a novel mechanism, I came up with a new hypothesis. And I used the creative energy productively to begin work on an article, which was published eventually.
The reason someone who thinks about sex with a sexually stimulating person outside of a love relationship is that it amounts to a planned seduction which requires analytical thinking and planning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm always a little wary when the results of a study turn out to be just as expected by the researchers. Let's see what further studies show.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo that's what he was trying to do. He wanted to boost his analytical thinking. I hope I didn't hurt his thinking too much.
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