Love Boosts Creativity, Lust Improves Logic: Study

The lovestruck enjoy a surge in creative powers while those who are merely randy are sharper logicians, a new study finds. Dutch researchers asked students to imagine either a romantic walk with a loved one or a one-night stand with a casual acquaintance before giving them a set of problems involving either creative thinking or logic, Miller-McCune reports.

On problems calling for creative thinking, the group with romance in mind outperformed both the lustful and a control group asked to imagine themselves a solitary stroll, while the reverse was true for the logic puzzles. The results, researchers say, demonstrate that people "process information in two fundamentally different ways: They focus on the forest, or they focus on the trees." The romantic were looking at the long-term picture, they say, while those with sex on the brain were more suited to pursuing short-term goals—such as "specific strategies of seduction." (More love stories.)