Mind Your Decisions

Is Sex Making Men Lose Money?

This is a thought that crossed my mind after mulling over a few recent studies.

I came to one gut reaction: internet pornography is making men lose more money.

Take a look at the evidence for yourself. What do you think?

1. Overwhelmingly, Men Look at Internet Pornography

There are some amazing (and seemingly responsibly collected) statistics at the Internet Filter Review.

Here are three telling statistics:

• 40 million US adults watch porn
• 72 percent of those adults are men
• 20 percent of men admit to viewing pornography while at work

Watching at work?!

Mixing business and pleasure cannot be a good thing. In fact, that’s what Stanford researchers recently pinned down.

2. Men Take Bigger Risks After Looking at Sexual Images

From the Calgary Herald:

New research from Stanford University has shown that in the immediate aftermath of viewing “positive emotional stimuli,” which, in this case, were erotic photos of a man and woman, heterosexual men are more likely to take bigger financial risks.

And:

As for whether using erotic pictures to sell cars works, Knutson said the strategy can work if men are faced with a quick decision — which would mimic the situation he and his colleagues created with their study.

Suddenly it all seems to make sense…

3. Men Lose More Money to Internet Fraud than Women

As reported in MacWorld:

Data compiled from more than 206,000 complaints received last year by the U.S. Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) shows that men lost $1.67 to every $1 lost by women in online fraud.

And the kicker: it seems like these losses are due to men engaging in riskier activities.

“Men tend to fall victim … to business investment schemes and some other schemes that have a higher dollar loss,” Kane said.

Investment fraud complaints, where the average loss is more than $3,500, were overwhelmingly submitted by men, Kane said. Compare that to something like auction fraud, where both men and women are frequently victimized. The average loss there is just over $480.

I can see the full picture now.

It starts with a disgruntled office worker who is bored. He decides to watch internet pornography to pass the time. This makes him more likely to gamble and thus more likely to fall for fraudulent schemes.