Love At First Fright
If you're having a hard time meeting Mr or Miss Right, maybe you're simply not throwing yourself into enough near-death experiences. This month's PotM shows that periods of intense excitement make you much more likely to find people attractive than usual.
As much as the Null tries to break the scientist stereotypes, it's fair to say that there is a wave of embarrassment tinged with fear whenever the 'rules of attraction' are mentioned. Rules that don't submit to logic. Rules untouchable by even the most complex algebra. Rules that have caused heartache and tribulation to many a be-lab-coated romantic over the centuries.
Imagine our delight then when, idly flicking through the Archives of Sexual Behaviour on the look out for cheap thrills, we stumbled across a significant, yet hitherto unheralded, golden rule: roller-coasters. Roller-coasters make you look good - admittedly not at the hands-covering-eyes, cheeks-covering-ears, pee-covering-shorts moments. In fact, you don't even have to get on the hellish wagons of death yourself for them to work their magic.
The study examined the lasting effects of nervous system arousal on perceptions of sexual attraction. In between trying to nick candy-floss and win large rubber toys, researchers approached individuals at amusement parks as they were either waiting to begin or as they had just got off a roller-coaster ride. Participants were shown a photograph of an average attractive, opposite-gendered individual and asked to rate the individual on attractiveness and dating desirability. Participants weren't also asked to whether they were free on Thursday night.
The results showed that the people who'd just got off the ride tended to find people much more attractive than whose waiting to get on. All that adrenaline pumping around your body affects the way we rate people around us, making us find the world a more beautiful place. So we're all now off to Blackpool pleasure beach to hang around the end of the Big Dipper and try to get lucky. Until next time...
[Meston, Cindy M. and Frohlich, Penny F. (2003). Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, USA. Archives of Sexual Behaviour 32, 537-544.]
Roller-coaster facts:
The highest ride in the UK is The Big One, in Blackpool. It is 213 feet (65m) high, with a 65-degree drop, a speed of 74 mph and a pull of 3.5G. Jubilee Odyssey at Fantasy Island, Skegness, is Europe's longest and fastest inverted ride, which takes you at up to 100mph through six spinning loops. The biggest wooden coaster in the UK is Megafobia, in Oakwood Park, Pembrokeshire, made of over 1 million feet of timber.
In the USA, the Top Thrill Dragster, at Ceder Point, Ohio, is the fastest (at 120mph), the tallest and has the largest drop (both 128 meters). The world’s longest ride is the Steel Dragon in Japan, which is 2.5 km.
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