The scent of a woman
2001-04-08 12:27
New York - Could love truly be in the air?
Researchers in Texas believe men become especially attuned - and
attracted to - female body odours during the most fertile stage
of the menstrual cycle.
"These findings raise serious doubts about conventional
scientific wisdom that human female ovulation is
concealed and that men cannot detect when women are
ovulating," according to Drs Devendra Singh and P. Matthew
Bronstad, psychologist researchers at the University of Texas
in Austin.
Some studies have suggested that female physiology and
behaviour change in subtle ways during ovulation. For example,
one study suggested that women's bodies undergo aesthetic
changes - such as a subtle alteration in skin tone - as they
approach and pass through ovulation.
But is any of this picked up by men? To find out, Singh and
Bronstad collected a month's worth of T-shirts worn by 19
female college students. The T-shirts were then handed out at
random to 52 men, each of whom was asked to smell each garment,
rating its odour for "intensity", "pleasantness", and
"sexiness".
None of the men were previously acquainted with any of the
women, nor were they informed of the nature of the research.
And the women were told to avoid perfumes and given unscented
products - such as soap, laundry detergent and shampoo - to use
during the month of T-shirt wearing.
The result? Men consistently rated the odours of T-shirts
worn during the most fertile stage of the menstrual cycle "as
more pleasant and sexy than odours from T-shirts worn during the
non-ovulatory luteal phase," the authors report in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
The power of these olfactory cues to ovulation did not seem
to dim over time - men favoured T-shirts worn during ovulation
even when presented with garments last worn 7 days previously.
"These findings suggest that ovulation may not be concealed
and that men could use ovulation-linked odours in their mate
selection," Singh and Bronstad conclude.