Women can make men spend money. To know this, one need only be a man (or, I suppose, a woman with said ability). But does this have a direct application to business? Neuromarketing blog argues that it does.

A recent study showed that both conspicuous spending and altruistic behavior can be boosted in men by priming them to think about mating (in this particular experiment, they were asked to describe their perfect date). This same concept seems obviously applicable to sales. If a purchaser is male, an even moderately attractive female is going to push a button in his brain making him want to display his tail feathers, so to speak.

Neuromarketing brings up the somewhat cliche example of hot female pharmaceutical sales reps pushing pills on mostly male doctors. The point, of course, isn’t that there aren’t exceptions to the rules — female doctors, male reps, unattractive female reps — but that our brains build certain biases into the system. Doctors can be as scrupulous as they want, and the reps can be doing nothing to “prime” their clients to think about sex, but the brain wants what the brain wants. And the brain wants to scream to the world: “I am virile! I can make babies! Behold!”

And it’s not just women who can make such appeals:

Female salespeople aren’t the only ones who try to appeal to male customers for a “power display.” I’ve periodically received calls from boiler-room security salesmen (universally male, in my experience) trying to pitch a stock or at least get an agreement that I’ll listen to future pitches. I’m usually courteous when I disengage a telemarketer, but the only way to get these guys off the line is to hang up. Any attempt to disengage will produce more questions. One approach I’ve had them use is a line like, “Are you telling me you can’t make a $5,000 investment?” Said dismissively, it’s clearly intended to question the authority, the financial wherewithal, and ultimately the masculinity of the client.

As is often the case with many of these neuro-based insights, these biases and the techniques they suggest are already ingrained in our culture — after all, they emanate from our brains.

We’re swimming in this stuff. It’s just now, however, that we’re becoming aware of the water.