Elephants on Acid (17 page)

In the decades following Watson’s complaint, scientists did begin to undertake serious studies of human sexuality. The most famous researchers in this field were Alfred Kinsey, William Masters, and Virginia Johnson. However, even as attitudes toward such work grew less restrictive, the research remained more descriptive than experimental. As late as 1989, the psychologists Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield observed that “until recently, scientists have had to rely almost exclusively on interviews and naturalistic studies for their information [about human sexuality]. Only recently have researchers begun to conduct laboratory experiments.”

Happily for us, while experimental studies of the mating behavior of humans may have been taboo throughout much of the history of science, there definitely were some—and in recent years the number has increased to quite a few. As you might expect, such experiments can be relied on to provide riveting reading.

People who cross the Capilano Suspension Bridge do so very carefully. The narrow, 450-foot-long bridge, located just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, is built of wood and wire cables. It has the unnerving tendency to sway, wobble, and creak in the wind, giving the impression it might flip over at any moment. For those standing on it, this would result in a 230-foot plummet onto the rocks below.

In 1974 an attractive woman approached single young men as they were crossing the bridge. Coyly gripping the low handrail to keep her balance, she asked if they would be willing to participate in a psychology experiment. She told them she was investigating “the effects of exposure to scenic attractions on creative expression.” Once they agreed, she showed them a picture of a woman holding a hand over her face and asked them to write a brief, dramatic story about it. They did this while standing on the bridge, rocking in the wind, trying not to think about the drop below.

When they were done, the interviewer smiled and thanked them. Then, as though on the spur of the moment, she suggested they call her to learn more about her research. She wrote down her name, Gloria, and phone number on a scrap of paper and handed it to them.

Thirteen of the twenty men she interviewed later called. It was clear they weren’t interested in her research. They were interested in her. But the woman wasn’t on the bridge fishing for dates. Nor was she there to explore the relationship between creative expression and scenic attractions. That was just her cover story. The true purpose of the experiment was to explore the link between fear and sexual arousal.

The experiment had been designed by two researchers, Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron. They hypothesized that men would find the interviewer more attractive, and thus be more likely to call her, if they met her in a fear-inducing environment such as the Capilano Bridge.

To confirm their theory, the researchers next had the woman approach men in a calmer environment—as they were relaxing on a park bench. She offered the same explanation, “This is a psychology experiment . . . ” and again gave out her name and number. This time she identified herself as Donna.

Under these conditions, only seven of twenty-three men later called. Not a bad response rate—these were still young guys, after all—but not a terrific one. The content of the stories written by each group also showed a marked
⁴⁰
difference. The men on the bridge wrote stories containing far more erotic imagery. They seemed to be highly aroused by the encounter. These results suggested the existence of a link between sexual arousal and fear.

The experimenters had guessed fear would enhance sexual arousal because of the concept of “misattribution of arousal.” When we’re in a situation that prompts strong emotions, this theory suggests, we often mistakenly attribute those feelings to the person we’re with, rather than to the situation. So if you’re on a suspension bridge two hundred feet off the ground, your senses will be on high alert. Your heart will beat faster. Your palms may grow sweaty. Your stomach will wind into a knot. If an attractive woman (or man) then approaches you, you associate your feelings with the person. You think you’re falling in love, when in reality you’re just afraid of falling.

Would-be Romeos can take advantage of this insight. Scare your date! Take her to a horror movie, for a ride on a motorcycle, or on a stroll across a creaky suspension bridge. Just remember that ideally you want her to be frightened by the situation, not by you.

Are women who play hard to get more desirable? Popular wisdom says so, as do many romance columnists. No less an authority than the Roman poet Ovid wrote, “Easy things nobody wants, but what is forbidden is tempting.” Elaine and William Walster, of the University of Wisconsin, decided to put the idea to the test with the aid of a woman willing to play alternately hard or easy to get. Since she interacted with a lot of men in her profession, she seemed like the perfect guinea pig. She was a prostitute.

The experiment occurred at her place of business—a brothel in Nevada. The procedure was as follows: When each client arrived at her room, she mixed him a drink. Then she delivered the “experimental manipulation.” Half the time this involved playing hard to get. She would tell her client, “Just because I see you this time it doesn’t mean that you can have my phone number or see me again. I’m going to start school soon, so I won’t have much time, so I’ll only be able to see the people that I like the best.” Then she proceeded to get to work.

The other half of the time, in the easy-to-get condition, the prostitute skipped the lecture and got right down to business.

The experimenters measured the clients’ desire for the prostitute in a variety of ways. They asked her to rate how much each guy seemed to like her, and they recorded the amount of money paid by the clients and the number of times during the following month the men returned.

When all the data was collected, the results were clear. The hypothesis that a hard-to-get prostitute would be more desirable was flat-out wrong. Clients were far less likely to return after being warned off. Apparently men who visit prostitutes don’t like them to be too fussy.

In subsequent experiments conducted at a dating service, the researchers corroborated that these results applied to all romantic interactions, not just to prostitute-client relationships. Men, despite what romance columnists say, do not like
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women who are uniformly hard to get. What they do like, the Walsters figured out, are women who are selectively hard to get—who are cold and standoffish to all the other guys, but warm and receptive to them. So what the prostitute could have said to ensure repeat business was, “I won’t have much time because I’m going to start school soon, so I’ll only be able to see the people I like the best. Which means I’ll always have time for you.” However, this strategy has not yet been experimentally confirmed.

Country music has doubtless made numerous contributions to the advancement of science, but it seldom has played a role as prominently as it did in James Pennebaker’s study of mating psychology in bars. Pennebaker was listening to Mickey Gilley’s classic song “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time,” and he wondered, “Is that true? Do the girls really get prettier?” Determined to find out, he assigned teams of his students to visit bars near the Charlottesville campus of the University of Virginia one Thursday evening in 1977.

The two-member teams entered the bars at three separate times—nine o’clock, ten thirty, and midnight. They approached both male and female bar patrons who appeared to be alone, explained they were conducting a psychology study, and asked the patrons to rate the attractiveness of the other occupants of the bar on a scale of one to ten.

Gilley, it turned out, was right. Men did rate the women as more attractive as closing time neared. Likewise for the women’s ratings of the men. But attractiveness ratings for members of the same sex decreased. (Evidently the teams visited heterosexual watering holes.)

Pennebaker suggested these results demonstrated “reactance theory”—as our time to make a decision lessens, we react by panicking and thinking all the choices look pretty good. So as bar patrons run out of time to decide whom to go home with, all possible romantic partners begin to seem equally compelling. However, Pennebaker conceded the results could also be an effect of increased alcohol intake skewing people’s judgment as the night progressed. This is popularly known as the beer-goggle phenomenon.

Pennebaker’s methodology and reasoning seemed sound, but subsequent attempts to replicate his study produced mixed results. A 1983 study obtained similar results at a blue-collar country-and-western bar in Georgia, but not at a college bar. A 1984 study in Madison, Wisconsin, entirely failed to replicate Pennebaker’s results. It found that ratings of perceived attractiveness
declined
as closing time approached, especially the ratings women gave to men. Nor did alcohol intake appear to have an effect on ratings.

In 1996 a study in Toledo, Ohio, attempted to resolve these disparate findings by asking more specific questions of bar patrons. It found the closing-time effect did exist, but only for people who specified they were single. People in a relationship apparently did not feel the same pressure to lower their standards as the minute hand neared last orders, because they knew they didn’t need to make a choice. They were already taken, so to speak. The researchers warned, “One important implication of these findings is that those who
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should be discriminating in choosing a partner (i.e., those not in a relationship) may make unwise and later regrettable choices.” This doesn’t come as news to all the battle-scarred veterans of the late-night dating scene.

The experiment began innocently enough. Pairs of Stanford undergraduate men, all of whom had volunteered to participate in a psychological study, were taken to a room. After meeting each other, the two people sat together at a table facing a projection screen. In front of each of them was a dial. The researcher, Dana Bramel, explained that the dial displayed the output of a “psychogalvanic skin response apparatus.”

Now things got a little stranger. The apparatus, they were told, would be measuring their subconscious responses to a series of pictures. The pictures would show men in partial stages of undress. Bramel emphasized the next point—any movement of the dial indicated homosexual arousal on the part of the subject. Strong homosexual feelings would cause the dial to “go off the scale.” But to put the undergraduates at ease, he assured them they alone could see the dial in front of them, and all data would be kept anonymous.

Finally, Bramel informed them of their task. They were to record whatever number their dial reached, and then predict the score of their fellow participant. The challenge was essentially to guess how gay the other person was.

The slideshow began. Bramel hadn’t been kidding when he said the photos would show partially undressed men. The models were, in fact, almost nude, and posed in various seductive stances. Each subject looked at the photos and then looked down at the dial in front of him. The dial was twitching vigorously, as though it had acquired a life of its own. The subject began to realize that, according to the psychogalvanic skin response apparatus, he was getting turned on. As the slideshow progressed and the pictures grew more risqué, the needle pulsed upward ever more energetically, like a finger wagging accusingly, saying,
Naughty boy, you’re having dirty thoughts!
The machine was telling him he was gay.

In the modern metrosexual age, a Stanford undergrad might easily laugh off learning he has latent “homosexual tendencies.” He might even readily admit to such inclinations. But this experiment did not occur post–
Will & Grace
. It took place in the late 1950s, at a time when homosexuals were one of the most stigmatized and openly discriminated-against groups in American society. Homosexuality was a legal reason for firing someone, for refusing him service, or for throwing him in prison. The American Psychiatric Association even listed homosexuality as a form of mental illness. Therefore, being flagged as gay was not something an undergrad could easily shrug off.

So as the subject looked at the surging needle on his dial, it must have been with a mixture of dismay and terror. He quietly recorded his scores and tried to guess what the guy next to him had rated. His goal was probably to finish the experiment as soon as possible and get out of there. But he actually had no reason to fear. He wasn’t about to be outed as gay. The readings on the dials were all the same, and all completely bogus. The needles were secretly controlled by the experimenter, who was cranking them up to higher levels as the pictures grew more graphic. Only eight participants ever suspected this. The others, all ninety of them, fell for the ruse completely. Bramel noted, “The expression of relief which often followed the unveiling of the deceptions indicated that the manipulations had been effective.”

Bramel’s true purpose was to determine how people would react to learning they possessed a socially stigmatized quality such as homosexuality. Would they project the same ‘negative’ quality onto other people, in a defensive attempt to get others into the same boat? The answer was yes. That’s exactly what they did. When predicting the score of the other guy in the room, subjects tended to guess it was similar to their own. This was especially true for people who had been judged before the experiment to have high self-esteem.

However, this finding is not the primary reason Bramel’s experiment is remembered today. Instead, the study has become a frequently cited example in the debate over when deception in psychological research goes too far. Critics of the experiment insist that convincing unsuspecting undergrads they were closet homosexuals went well beyond any scientific justification. Imagine, in particular, the fear of any participant who actually was gay, as he sat watching the twitching dial threaten to expose his secret to the world.