How many times have we seen a man talking to a curvaceous woman only to have her point to her own eyes and say "Hey, buddy, up here! It's funny -- or, at least, it was funny the first dozen times we saw it -- because it's true. The male eye does have a way of drifting south. But why? Why are heterosexual men so fascinated by women's breasts that we sometimes act as if the breasts are the seat of the soul?
Well, we happen to be heterosexual men. We also happen to be men interested in biology -- one of us, Larry, is one of the world's leading experts in the neuroscience of social bonding. Biologically speaking, this human male breast obsession is pretty weird. Men are the only male mammals fascinated by breasts in a sexual context.
Women are the only female mammals whose breasts become enlarged at puberty, independent of pregnancy. We are also the only species in which males caress, massage and even orally stimulate the female breasts during foreplay and sex. Women do seem to enjoy the attention, at least at the right moments. When Roy Levin, of the University of Sheffield, and Cindy Meston, of the University of Texas, polled people -- including women -- they found that stimulating the breasts or nipples enhanced sexual arousal in about 82 percent of the women.
Nearly 60 percent explicitly asked to have their nipples touched. Men are generally pretty happy to oblige. As the success of Hooters, "men's" magazines, a kajillion websites, and about 10, years of art tell us, men are extremely drawn to breasts, and not because boys learn on the playground that breasts are something that they should be interested in.
It's biological and deeply engrained in our brain. In fact, research indicates that when we're confronted with breasts, or even breast-related stimuli, like bras, we'll start making bad decisions and not just to eat at Hooters. For example, in one study, men were offered money payouts. They could have a few Euros right away, or, if they agreed to wait a few days, more Euros later. In this version of a classic "delayed gratification" also called intertemporal choice by behavioral economists experiment, some men watched videos of pastoral scenes while others watched videos of attractive women with lots of skin exposed running in slo-mo, "Baywatch" style.
