Every man has a portion of his brain that “lights up” when getting ready to perform an action with power tools. According to a study reported on by CNN, this same area lights up when men look at images of scantily clad women.

CNN interviewed Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University whose new research indicates that “in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.”

A supplementary study by Fiske further underscores how mens brains equate tools and pictures of women as a “means to an end…” It found that “men tend to associate bikini-clad women with first-person action verbs such as I ‘push,’ ‘handle’ and ‘grab…'”

Dr. Charles Raison, psychiatrist and director of the Mind/Body Institute at Emory University in Atlanta noted that (in perhaps the most obvious statement of the year?) “…the suggestion might be that there’s some hard-wiring there that can interfere with the average man’s ability to interact on deeper levels with really hot looking stranger women in bikinis.”

Has anyone experienced any problems interacting with their hot looking new Delta Unisaws?

Remember: the next time you’re going out into the workshop – no looking at the Tool Crib blog before hand. Your old tools KNOW you don’t just read us for the articles ;)

And… am I alone in feeling insulted by CNN’s insinuation that all men objectify their power tools?

See the CNN article: Men see bikini-clad women as objects, psychologists say

And thanks for the tip from Mr. Dahl over at Charles and Hudson: Tim Allen & Tool Time had it Right from the Beginning