Taking meetings to the next level...

Johan Karremans couldn’t remember his own address when an attractive lady asked him at the end of a conversation. This Dutch psychologist had been so busy trying to impress her that his cognitive abilities were temporary exhausted. He decided to investigate this more closely and discovered man can’t think optimaly after a conversation with a woman. The prettier the woman, the stronger the effect. With women this effect did not appear.

Earlier it was said that that worse cognitive performance of boys in schools was due to motivation and personality, but the result of this research is so strong, Karremans thinks it is at least a complementary explanation. Besides schools, he believes the effect is similar on the work floor.
Making a good impression takes energy because you are monitoring your own behaviour as well as her reactions. Different cognitive abilities draw from the same energy source was revealed by earlier research. This source gets empty, which becomes obvious when you have to perform cognitive work afterwards. The research also revealed that man perform worse even if they only think they are observed by a woman.

From other research in ego-depletion (the draining of cognitive abilities) there seems to be a connection between glucose levels in the brain. Drinking or eating something sweet after a conversation with a beautiful women, brings men’s performance back to normal.

Journal of Social Psychology, July 2009.


Karremans, J. C., Verwijmeren, T., Pronk, T. M., & Reitsma, M. (2009).
Interacting with women can impair men's executive functioning.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1041-1044.