Another overfunded academic research project to tell the rest of us what we already knew:

Sexy women in bikinis really do inspire some men to see them as objects, according to a new study of male behavior.

Brain scans revealed that when men are shown pictures of scantily clad women, the region of the brain associated with tool use lights up.
...
Fiske and colleagues asked 21 heterosexual male volunteers to first take a test that scores people based on different types of sexist attitudes.
...
Most of the men best remembered headless photographs of women in bikinis, even if they'd only seen the image for two-tenths of a second [and] the men who scored higher as "hostile sexists"—-those who view women as controlling and invaders of male space—-didn't show brain activity that indicates they saw the women in bikinis as humans with thoughts and intentions.

Scientists have seen this absence of activation only once before, in a study where people were shown off-putting photographs of homeless people and drug addicts.

(via Fr. Mercer)