A new study identifies two likely consequences when a man ogles a woman: Her performance in math goes down, and her interest in being with him goes up. The researchers suggest that perhaps such looking should be suppressed by law. (Christian Science Monitor)

To jump from a negative consequence for women to legal suppression ignores the consequences of such suppression for both sexes. Although the supposed study showing that men live longer if they look at women turns out to be a myth, men certainly derive pleasure from such looking, and perhaps other benefits as well. And suppressing it would mean suppressing natural behavior — yet another instance of targeting masculinity.

The consequences for women may be bad as well. For one thing, some women find value in being found attractive, and this may be (I should think, is) natural too. For another, the harder it is for a man to avoid conduct that might be interpreted as sexual harassment, the stronger his incentive to avoid interacting with women at work at all.

So what to do about the math scores?

Well, previous studies have shown that reminding someone of other people’s stereotype-based expectations can affect her performance. I recall one in which Asian women, before being given a math test, were told either that Asians are good at math or that women are bad at math. The ones reminded of the positive stereotype did better; the ones reminded of the negative stereotype did worse. And this was so even though the test subjects presumably knew that, as Asian women, they were subject to both stereotypes.

There is a stereotype in our society that good-looking women are dumb, and another stereotype that men think good-looking women are dumb. If a woman accepts these stereotypes, then she may interpret ogling as telling her she’s expected to be dumb, and she may play the part in the same way as the Asian women who were reminded that they were women. Moreover, if at some level she wants to be attractive (as I think most people of both sexes do), and she thinks stupidity is attractive to men, this may motivate her to act less intelligent.

More simply, it could just be the stereotype of women as bad at math: Ogling certainly reminds a woman that she’s a woman.

If the stereotypes are involved in the effect the study attributes to ogling, perhaps changing the stereotypes could have a positive effect on women’s performance — and even make the effect of ogling positive, if it becomes a reminder that you’re pretty and that pretty women are good, rather than bad, at math.