Odor as an element of subjective assessment of attractiveness of young males and females

Abstract

In 46 male and 19 female students who were both donors and recipients of odor samples, we studied effects of the menstrual cycle phase, reproductive health, sexual motivation, and sexual experience on subjective assessment of intensity and attractiveness of the sweat odor. The sweat samples were collected by the 60-min long exposure of a filter paper in the armpit. Then the male and female samples were reciprocally assessed olfactorily with respect to their intensity, unattractiveness/attractiveness, and association with male or female. It has been established that the cycle phase affects statistically significantly the coincidence of subjective assessments by the unpleasant/pleasant scale, which different recipients were giving to the same odor samples. Their coincidence in the non-receptive state is replaced by the non-coincidence at the receptive cycle phase, which indicates an increase in the contribution of the recipient’s individual properties to the variability of odor assessments. In girls in the non-receptive state there is noted the reverse correlation between the strength and attractiveness of the male odor. In the receptive state, they become tolerant to intensive male odors. At non-regular menstrual cycles, the female odor is assessed by young males as less pleasant. At the same time, the girls themselves with the cycle disturbances assess higher the male odor samples as compared with the girls who had regular cycles. The first sexual experience decreases the subjective scores given by girls to the male odor samples. The young males, on the contrary, increase assessments of the female odor after acquiring the sexual experiment. Coefficients of correlation of the mutual assessments of odor attractiveness of young males and females are progressively rising with increase of biological and social significance of the search for optimal partner. Thus, effect of psychophysiological and social factors on assessments of attractiveness of odor samples agrees well with requirements, to which the reproductively significant non-verbal signal should fit.