Posted on 05/06/2011 1:08:34 PM PDT by Red Badger
Sexual chemicals affect how we identify an androgynous figure.
Women and men can sniff out the opposite sex via odorless pheromones, a new study suggests.
The discovery adds another piece to the growing body of evidence that humans, much like the rest of the animal kingdom, know more from their noses than previously thought.
"We know that for animals, chemosignals are actually the most used signals to communicate, whereas with humans, we think chemosensation is not really used," said study leader Wen Zhou, a psychologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
"But based on our experiences, they are still influenced by these cues, even if they don't explicitly know it."
In a recent experiment, subjects who smelled possible pheromones from the opposite sex were more likely to interpret ambiguous human figures as that sex—even when the participants didn't know they were smelling anything.
Pheromones—chemicals that can communicate sexual information—are widespread in the animal world, and some research suggests humans use them unconsciously as well.
(See "Lesbians Respond Differently to 'Human Pheromones,' Study Says.")
Zhou and colleagues used videos of points of light moving in a way that fools the eye into seeing human motion.
The videos were made by filming real people in motion-capture suits with LEDs at each joint—similar to the suits used to create Hollywood special effects.
Then the scientists mathematically manipulated the dots until the "figures" had neither a typically male nor typically female gait.
Sex Pheromones Influence Gender Choice
Twenty men and 20 women watched the video animations of these ambiguous figures, as well as ones that were more obviously male or female. While watching the videos, the subjects sniffed clove oil infused with the male steroid androstadienone, the female steroid estratetraenol, or a plain oil used as a base for many cosmetics.
Men who smelled the female pheromone were more likely to identify the androgynous walker as a woman, and even were more likely to identify more clearly male figures as female than those who just smelled clove oil.
(Also read "Women's Tears Reduce Sex Drive in Men, Study Hints.")
The same results applied when women sniffed the male compound: They more frequently saw the ambiguous figures as male than the women who smelled the plain oil.
Estratetraenol had no effect on women, and androstadienone didn't affect men.
This perception difference seems to be completely unrelated to what their noses told them: A blindfolded test subject couldn't tell the difference between steroid-infused clove oil and plain oil.
"It's completely below their awareness," Zhou said. "They didn't know what they were smelling, but their behavior showed these different patterns."
Zhou presented the research in April at the annual meeting of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences.
Scent of a Wench..or something like that
Frankly, it sounds like something Miggs would say.
Not anymore....
Way to tell us something we already know, again, science! Keep on gobbling up our money.
Scent of a Skank...or something like that
So true, we’d be happier back in our caves covered in lice. Durn Science!
ChiComs leadership: How can we weaponize it?
The perception was done automatically subconsciously, but the interpretation was done by the faculty of reason consciously based on its analysis of the perception.
“So true, we’d be happier back in our caves covered in lice. Durn Science!”
Yes, that’s exactly what I was saying. Go ahead and throw out Einstein and Newton along with “Eating Twinkies Linked to Increased Erection Frequency (IEF) in Males”; they’re pretty much the same thing.
That many sluts all grouped up...and I missed it.
After a hard day of working in the yard, Mrs. Cajun has stated, in no uncertain terms, that she can definitely sniff out the old Cajun.
Can she apply for some government grant on her study?
Sent can trigger a strong and instant response even after many years too. I was shopping at a Kroger’s last year and when this woman walked by I caught a good whiff of her perfume. I still remember how I instantaneously recognized it and my head whipped around even though I hadn’t smelled it for almost 25 years.
It was called Jauntu or spelled something like that, and my first love back in HS wore it always. I looked at her and said “Jauntu” with a smile, she seemed pretty impressed by the look on her face I could name an obscure brand like that.
I spent the rest of the trip floating down memory lane, amazed at the strong response I had to one little smell.
I’m going to do a study that proves that 99% of all studies have the results determined before the study is performed.
That smell is not pheromones. It is just stink. LOL
I know that the smell of my wife keeps me interested.
“Lesbians Respond Differently to ‘Human Pheromones,’ Study Says.” is probably the purpose of this study—to show that lesbians are genetically different from other women.
Of the lesbians I have seen, many tend to be unattractive man haters.
I seem to remember the word *stink* in her comments preceded by the word *you* :^)
“It was called Jauntu or spelled something like that...”
Jontue? It was big in the late 70’s - all the disco ladies’ rooms reeked of it!
My boyfriend of the time liked it, too.
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