The Scent of Attraction: How Pheromones Play a Role in Choosing a Mate
The season of love is here, and it always makes me reflect more on scent and its influence on attraction and intimacy. This time of year is HUGE for the perfume, candle, and bubble bath business. A smell is more than just a scent, it has the power to allure and charm, even influence a change in behavior. Maybe there is more to those tales of witches making “Love Potions”. Or maybe cupid’s arrow contains some sort of aromatic resin on the tip?
How scent plays a role in choosing your partner?
Have you ever felt instantly at ease around someone? Do you believe in love at first sight? Pheromones may play a role in this.
What is a pheromone?
Pheromones are chemical messengers that are produced and eventually emitted through the body. Everyone has their own unique signature pheromone scent that is emitted through our sweat glands. Those pheromones can play a role in how others respond to us, both positively and negatively.
What is the difference between pheromones and hormones?
Hormones are produced and interact within the body.
Pheromones are produced inside the body but function outside the body. They influence how others respond to us. Pheromones can influence sexual attraction, sexual repellent, mother-infant bonding and may influence the synchronization of menstrual cycles of women who interact frequently. (1)
How do pheromones impact our emotional responses to other?
Human emotions can be influenced by scents within our environment that travel through the olfactory system to the limbic system. Pheromones can also influence emotions and create feelings of relaxation, pleasantness and relaxation. This may play a role in our attraction for others. (2)
Science has shown that we are subconsciously attracted to the natural odor and pheromones of another with a different DNA makeup than ours in a way that is more likely to produce healthy offspring.
One of the best examples of the interaction of pheromones is the role in mother-infant bonding. The sense of smell is one of the first senses to develop in utero. A baby’s nose starts to form in the first trimester. The nasal cavity and chemoreceptors for smelling are ready as early as 9 weeks gestation. They are fully connected to the brain at 13 weeks. Because smells cross the amniotic fluid, by the end of the first trimester a baby can actually smell foods that mom is eating. At birth, smell is the most advanced sense. Newborns orient themselves by smell more than any other sense. When placed on a mother’s belly after birth, they will work their way up to the breast navigating by sense of smell alone. At birth, a newborn’s nose is so finely tuned that they can tell the difference between their mother’s breast milk and that of another mom!
Do you know that newborn smell you just can’t get enough of? This exists because every person has their own signature pheromone and it’s formed within the womb. These chemical signals are communicated back and forth between a fetus and their mom. The link is so strong that a mother can identify her infant not only by smells but also pheromones at birth. (3) (4) This plays a huge role in mother-infant bonding and promotes the release of oxytocin, which then helps stimulate the production of breast milk.
This pheromone connection between mother and children is lifelong. In the book, Love Scents: How Your Natural Pheromones Influence Your Relationships, Your Moods, and Who You Love, the author shares an amazing testimony of this occurring in real life. A woman placed her son for adoption and didn’t see him for many years. She was visiting in England and a group of men walked by. Without looking at the group, she had a strong gut instinct that her son was there. One of the men in the group had a strong instinct that his biological mother was there. They both turned around and faced each other and said “You’re my son!” and “You’re my mom!” Researchers in the book claim that this instinct was related to pheromones.
How our noses play a role in mate selection
Compared to animals, we differ greatly in how pheromones affect our behavior towards others. Humans depend more on visual cues when it comes to mate selection. Animals have a highly functioning vomeronasal organ (VNO) which detects others pheromones. In humans, the VNO has been discovered but does not function to the extent of animals.
The VNO is located above the hard palate of the nose on both sides of the nasal septum. It is less developed than animals, however, does have some function regarding pheromones. The vomeronasal organ is also linked to the limbic system within the brain which is responsible for motivated behavior, sexual desire, aggression and maternal behavior.
What does this have to do with mate selection?
Body odor has been connected with human attraction. Researchers have yet to pinpoint how pheromones impact behavior specifically, but they have found that we smell best to a person who has a genetically based immune system that is different from our own. Through research it has been shown there is a correlation between mate choice, odor preference and genetic similarity at the Major Compatibility Complex (MHC). The MHC is a group of genes essential for the immune system and plays an important role in immunological recognition. In one study, it was found that women prefer the smell of sweaty t-shirts worn by men with suitably different MHC genes. (5) What was interesting about the study, is that women who were taking birth control, did not prefer MHC differing odors. (6) Another study showed that women who came off birth control after they got married didn’t like the natural scent of their husband anymore and took 6 months to adjust. (7)
Even if your partner isn’t an ideal genetic match, it is still possible to become attached to their smell, their personality, their appearance and everything about them. Due to the strong connection of scent and memory, we can easily form an association between their natural scent and love. Their odor can subconsciously trigger emotions and past memories related to happiness, bonding and love.
Do you like the natural scent of your significant other?
When I polled my Instagram community on this topic last year, 91% of those who responded said they did like the natural scent of their significant other. I also received some interesting messages on this topic:
“Not his sweat but I actually like laying right below his face so I can smell his breath. Sounds so weird. I think it’s his nose breath?? It’s not bad to me and is very calming.” (Side note: men tend to perspirate on their top lip)
“I love the way my husband smells when I kiss him! I tell him that all the time.”
“Wow, this makes so much sense to me. I dated a guy in high school were I literally hated his natural smell. He didn’t smell bad, but to me it was just not appealing at all and I didn’t understand why at the time.”
“I couldn’t stand the smell of my husband when I was pregnant with our 4th son. He didn’t stink, just smelled different. After my son was born, I loved his natural scent again!”
“After my husband gets up to shower for work, I always roll over to his side of the bed and lay on his pillow. I find his natural scent on the pillow so soothing and calming.”
Does applying scent influence our pheromones and attraction to others?
Using scent to influence attraction is not something new and has been going on for centuries.
Your personal “pheromone signature odor” is a complex mixture of pheromones, body oils, fatty acids, sweat and hormones secreted on the skin from your apocrine glands.
Our peak pheromones are around age 20 and slowly decline after that. Some scientists believe that increased cleanliness can interfere with our natural signature scent and potentially play a role in decreasing interpersonal bonding. While others believe that the nature still functions and our signature scent isn’t drastically impacted by how often we cleanse or what we apply to our bodies.
“Even though we are obsessed with cleansers, perfumes and deodorants, nature still functions. Our noses and olfactory glands are more robust than originally thought to be, still giving nature the ability to help choose our life partners so our offspring can have the best chance of survival.” (8)
Our natural scent works in combination with a perfume or essential oil. The heat of our body biochemically alters the odors and blends with your signature scent. An example of this is a sweaty guy at the gym who doesn’t have time to shower and sprays on a cologne and goes about his day. The cologne does not smell the same on him as it does in the bottle. Another example is how essential oils smell differently on people. Sometimes we can apply the same essential oil and it may smell sweeter on person or more musky on another.
Scent combined with our own unique signature pheromones can influence attraction. One study showed that study participants who smelled rose oil rated faces as more attractive. This study helps show that scent can influence our attraction and behavior with others. (9)
If you are looking for ways to utilize essential oils to help with intimacy, check out this blog: Set the Mood for Love: Using Essential Oils for Intimacy.
Disclaimer: This blog is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice. The use of information on this blog or materials linked from this blog is at the user's own risk. The content of this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard, or delay in obtaining, medical advice for any medical condition they may have, and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.
References:
Grammer K, Fink B, Neave N. Human pheromones and sexual attraction. Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol. 2005 Feb 1;118(2):135-42. doi: 10.1016/j.ejogrb.2004.08.010.
Hummer TA, Phan KL, Kern DW, McClintock MK. A human chemosignal modulates frontolimbic activity and connectivity in response to emotional stimuli. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2017 Jan;75:15-25. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2016.09.023. Epub 2016 Sep . 29.
Hierl K, Croy I, Schäfer L. Body Odours Sampled at Different Body Sites in Infants and Mothers-A Comparison of Olfactory Perception. Brain Sci. 2021 Jun 21;11(6):820.
Vaglio S. Chemical communication and mother-infant recognition. Commun Integr Biol. 2009 May;2(3):279-81.
Wedekind C, Seebeck T, Bettens F, Paepke AJ. MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans. Proc Biol Sci. 1995 Jun 22;260(1359):245-9.
Roberts SC, Gosling LM, Carter V, Petrie M. MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives. Proc Biol Sci. 2008 Dec 7;275(1652):2715-22.
Russell VM, McNulty JK, Baker LR, Meltzer AL. The association between discontinuing hormonal contraceptives and wives' marital satisfaction depends on husbands' facial attractiveness. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Dec 2;111(48):17081-6.
Wedekind C, Füri S. Body odour preferences in men and women: do they aim for specific MHC combinations or simply heterozygosity? Proc Biol Sci. 1997 Oct 22;264(1387):1471-9.
Seubert J, Gregory KM, Chamberland J, Dessirier JM, Lundström JN. Odor valence linearly modulates attractiveness, but not age assessment, of invariant facial features in a memory-based rating task. PLoS One. 2014 May 29;9(5):e98347.