Women around the world spend billions of dollars each year on exotic smelling perfumes and lotions in the hopes of attracting a mate. However, according to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, going "au natural" may be the best way to capture a potential mate's attention.
— From Scent of a woman: Men's testosterone responses to olfactory ovulation cues at Physorg.
Who needs perfume when you have nuts?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeXQbBxP5UI
Love that commercial.
Pfft… like I wear fragrance for anyone but me.
Exactly!
Me three.
I aim to repel, not attract.
+1
Me four.
I think that was just a provocative lede to get people to read the story…..the study doesn’t seem to have anything to do with whether women are more attractive with or without perfume, only whether a woman smells more attractive when she’s ovulating or not.
Very true.
One more example to make me chuckle at the state of the field of evolutionary biology and also at the state of freelance science writing. All I’ll say is that even if women use perfume, the bio response in men during ovulation would probably still be the same, not negated, as it’s involuntary and the man’s brain would likely perceive the “ovulation smell” anyway. So might as well scent yourself with Guerlain instead of dirty tshirt. And regarding “attracting a mate,” maybe someone should do a study about whether perfumes enhance or detract from someone’s perceived attractiveness at all anyway.
These studies are all so small they hardly matter anyway. Keeps graduate students busy though, I’d guess.
First of all, weren’t we just reading the other day about how people tend to pick scents that fit with their genetic makeup, helping them attract mates of differing genetic makeups? I know that’s different from timing it around ovulation, but still. And along the same line of thinking, I’d be more interested to know if women chose different scents around the time of ovulation (assuming they’re nuts like us and not signature-scent people).
I know that things smell differently to me at different times of the month – I don’t know if it’s my sense of smell that’s different or if the scent interacts with my skin differently, but it boils down to the same thing in that I tend to wear different scents at different times of the month. There are even a few scents that I simply cannot stand when I’m ovulating, but I still like them at other times.
Same with me, Cynthia. I’ve been strangely attracted to Serendipitous, Angel and Pink Sugar this week and couldn’t put my finger on why… Until I remembered what week it was. Not to mention my sudden urge to bake some cookies last night. =)
I don’t buy/wear fragrance for anyone else’s pleasure but mine in most cases anyway. It’s just a bonus if someone else mentions that they like it. In fact, The CEO’s first response upon smelling something I’m wearing that he likes is a trepedatious,”Do you have that one?” shortly followed by “How much is it?” if the answer’s no. I don’t think that exactly puts him in the mood for love…
But yes, a study on the effects of perfume with regard to attractiveness would be interesting, though not exactly what the fragrance industry would want to encourage, I’m sure.
I like exotic smelling perfumes, so I shall wear them if I want to! D:<