The Brain Breaks for Sexual Puns

When it comes to processing sexual information, the brain likes to
take it slow, says James Geer, Ph.D. The Louisiana State University
psychologist found that double entendres--words or phrases with more than
one meaning--took longer to respond to when they had an erotic
component.

Geer had subjects read a series of sentences, each including a word
that could be sexual or not, depending on context. They were then shown a
string of letters and asked whether it was nonsense or an actual word.
When the initial sentence or word was sexual, men took longer to complete
the task than when what they'd read was neutral--and women were slower
still, Geer reports in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. It seems that in
language, as in life, sex makes things complicated. "You only have so
many mental resources to apply to any task," he says. "If the task
generates an emotion, this uses up some of those resources, and work on
the task is slowed down." Sexual inhibitions also contribute to the
delay: The more "socially unacceptable" subjects considered a word, the
longer they took to react.

In responding to risque language, says Geer, we may fear making an
inappropriate reply that will embarrass us. This danger is especially
apparent to women, who are socialized to be cautious in sexual matters.
So, Geer says, we put mental processing "on hold" for a moment, while we
think of just the right thing to say.