Carnal knowledge

Does mind-numbing horniness make you dumber? Or, conversely, does a mean case of blue balls keep your killer instinct sharp? We took one good doctor’s lead and conducted our own mildly scientific sexperiment to find out just how much lust affects productivity.

“You are going to be distracted and less efficient when confronted with this type of distraction,” says Dr. James H. Geer, an adjunct professor in clinical psychology at Franklin & Marshall College and a pioneer in the study of how sexual thoughts alter concentration.  In 1996, Geer coined the term sexual content-induced delay to describe the phenomenon, after finding test subjects had a slower reaction time to words of an erotic nature like nipples and orgasm than they did to neutral words like oven or made-up words like blasl.

For our spin, a diverse group of five New Yorkers were timed as they answered 11 SAT Verbal questions. At first they took the test in a controlled environment (in dead silence, the way we all took it) and then again after privately enjoying ten minutes of porn. (Participants were given a selection of themes to suit their fetish, including Latin, Asian, black, gay, barely legal and erotic fiction.)

The results: Out of five participants, only two improved or maintained their scores after watching the porn, while the other three lost points. Jessie, a male investment banker from Manhattan, dropped 28 percent after admittedly “getting into” the abbreviated screening of a Latina gang bang. “I couldn’t stay focused, because every question formed some kind of sexual connotation, which made me think about the porn,” says the 27-year-old.

Hal, a 29-year-old insurance executive, experienced a similar decline, dropping 28 percent after watching a female masturbation scene. “Sometimes my mind will stray after passing a hot girl on the street, which relates to my decreased score,” he says. Betsy, at 31-year-old Web designer from Brooklyn, confessed she was “rattled” after being asked to stop reading a football-player-on-cheerleader erotic short story halfway through. “You pulled me off of it before I could finish!” Her score dropped 37 percent.

But not everybody was adversely affected by pent-up sexuality. Dina, a 28-year-old student from Brooklyn, scored the same on both tests and attributed a morning orgasm to her level results. “You don’t crave sex after you have had it, so I kind of got the horniness out of my system.” Craig, a 29-year-old gay man working for a nonprofit, improved his score by 19 percent after screening one of his favorite Titan Media DVDs. “It relaxed me and almost made me focus more, kind of like a 3pm cigarette break.”

Also in this issue:

• We so horny: Ooh, yeah—can you feel it? Spring. It’s got us so...aroused. All that undressed flesh and sexy goings-on in the city. Wanna see? Come along for 33 things that make us hot.
• City stimulants: Indoors: Hot baristas...hookahs...Hellenic statues
• City stimulants: Outdoors: Eye candy on the beach, in the park, at the stadium...and dogs doin' it.
• City stimulants: Central Park: The Mecca of spring ogling deserves its own separate discussion.
• Carnal knowledge: Being horny affects more than your little brain. Armed with porn, we put five subjects to the test.
• Gross anatomy: Girls: When the weather warms up, the local animal life sheds its skins—and sometimes reveals more than you wanted to see.
• Gross anatomy: Guys
• Spill your spring fetish: Tell us what turns you on. It'll be our little secret.
• Horny Quiz: Women: What's your spring fever temperature?
• Horny Quiz: Men: What's your spring fever temperature?
• Sexy or skanky! Men: You decide! Rate the fashion of these potentially spring fever-afflicted New York men.
• Sexy or skanky!: You decide! Rate the fashion of these potentially spring fever-afflicted New York women.
• Reader fetishes: We asked what turns you on in spring and you told us. Often in detail.
• Summer movie preview: Your guide to what's out this season.