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Scents
of Love : Smell & Attraction
by Gloria Liven
The sense of smell
may play a large role in human attraction. Women may find some men's smell
irresistible, and others repulsive. The difference is lies in the individual
man and woman.
Women find men to smell very attractive if those men have a very dissimilar
immune system; when women smell men with a similar immune system, they
often find it unpleasant.
Interestingly, if women are on the Pill, the had the opposite effect- they were attracted to men with similar genes.
Researchers think that smell gives women a clue to the man's immune system-- and if he will be a good mate for her.
Mating with someone
whose immune system is very different from your own means your offspring
will have a good mix of genes, making them stronger or healthier.
The more diverse the genes of the parents are, the stronger the offspring's
immune system.
Mating with someone whose immune system is bad because it doesn't bring new genes into the organism.
This phenomenon was discovered by Claus Wedekind, a Swiss researcher who conducted the famous "sweaty t-shirt study" in 1995. He had men wear a t-shirt for 2 days without using any kind of deodorant or scented soaps, and then put the shirts in identical boxes. Women were asked to sniff the shirts, and asked to rate which ones they were most sexually attracted to.
He looked at the immune
systems of the women and men, and found that women were most attracted
to men with a major histocompatibility complex (MHC) that was most different
from their own.
The MHC is involved in the immune system, and helps us recognize invaders
to keep us strong.
Women on the Pill, however, showed the reverse; they found men whose immune systems were similar more appealing. This may mean that if you're on the pill, you may have trouble finding a genetically compatible mate.
New research has found that being in love may make a women less able to distinguish males besides her mate.
External
Links:
Orignal
Research "MHC genes, body odours, and odour preferences"
Psychology
Today: Smell of Love
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