TruTV Counts Down “10 Dumb Sex & Relationship Studies”

A quick glance at my history on this site will attest to the fact that I'm a huge fan of relationship studies. I'm mesmerized by the ways we try to apply science to sex and love, in hopes of one day being able to explain the mysterious ways of the heart.

Some studies provide fascinating insight into modern mating rituals, but many (if not most) are, as TruTv.com writer Nick Nadel puts it, "forehead-slappingly obvious." Nadel collected a list of 10 studies that most definitely fall into the latter category. Here are a few of the highlights:

Dubious Study #1: Researchers at Radboud University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands found that men tend to have difficulty performing cognitive tasks after socializing with members of the opposite sex. In other words, Nadel says, "interacting with women makes men dumb."

Nadel's Take: "As obvious studies go, this one is up there with 'people sometimes bend the truth online.'" It shouldn't take a research team to figure out that men's brains get distracted around women.

My Thoughts: I have to side with Nadel on this one. It shouldn't come as a surprise that men's brains get a little addled around attractive women, and I bet that a study on women's brains would find that they are equally as addled around attractive men.

Dubious Study #2: According to the findings of one of OkCupid's many studies on the OkTrends blog, people who use Twitter every day have shorter relationships than those who do not.

Nadel's Take: OkCupid doesn't even believe their findings. A spokesperson for the site said "Unfortunately, we have no way to tell who's dumping who here; whether the Twitterati are more annoying or just more flighty than everyone else." In other words, there's no actual proof that Twitter has anything to do with the length of a relationship.

My Thoughts: If the people responsible for the study aren't even sure what their findings are, they're probably not worth paying much attention to. The OkTrends studies are a lot of fun, but are by no means the definitive word on all things dating.

Dubious Study #3: The length of a man's ring finger is related to his attractiveness, according to a team at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. The ratio that compares the length of a man's index finger to his ring finger is known as "2D:4D."

Nadel's Take: The study claims that men with longer ring fingers have "rugged, caveman-like" faces. "Right," Nadel says, "because women always go for the caveman look. It's not like some of our most popular male celebrities are non-threatening, baby-faced types or anything."

My Thoughts: Many studies examining female perception of male attractiveness have found that women are attracted to different types of men during different phases of their menstrual cycles. A woman could, therefore, be interested in both the "baby-faced types" and the "rugged cavemen" over the course of a month. And as far as the fingers go, "correlation is not causation" - though there may be a link between finger length and attractiveness, one does not necessarily cause the other.

Stay tuned for more frivolous findings and silly studies from Nick Nadel and TruTV...