Researchers have identified an odorless compound emitted by people—and in particular babies—called hexadecanal, or HEX, that appears to foster aggressive behavior in women and blunt it in men. “We cannot say that this is a pheromone,” says study author Noam Sobel, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science. “But we can say that it’s a molecule expressed by the human body that influences human behavior, specifically aggressive behavior, in a predicted manner.”
— Read more in Chemical emitted by babies could make men more docile, women more aggressive at Science.
Wow that is a really poor title for a paper, isn’t it? They tested relative aggression, not relative docility. Not really the same thing.
Original title of the paper was “Sniffing the human body volatile hexadecanal blocks aggression in men but triggers aggression in women”, so that’s what Science mag did with it.
Fascinating!!!
Very.