Synthetic Copulin Does Not Affect Men\u2019s Sexual Behavior

Megan N Williams,Coren Apicella

doi:10.1007/s40750-017-0083-y

Abstract

Chemical communication plays an important role in the social interactions and mating behavior of diverse animal taxa; yet its role in humans remains equivocal. Using a randomized, placebo-controlled experiment involving 243 male participants, we test whether exposure to synthetic copulin – a mixture of volatile fatty acids secreted vaginally in primates, increases 1) men’s sexual motivation using an incentivized behavioral task, 2) self-reported willingness to take sexual risks, 3) preference for short-term mating, 4) perceptions of female attractiveness and 5) self-reported mate value. Because chemical receptors are found throughout the body and human chemosensory pathways have yet to be definitively identified, we also manipulate the location of copulin exposure (i.e. olfactory epithelium versus epidermal keratinocytes in the genital region). Finally, we examine whether prior sexual experience mediate any behavioral effects. Unlike previous reports, we fail to find any effects of copulin exposure on measures of men’s sexual behavior.

Highlights

Chemical communication is the most ubiquitous form of communication among organisms (Wyatt 2014)
In addition to examining the role of past sexual experience and varying the location of copulin exposure, we address some of the limitations of past research
T-tests revealed mean ratings of the attractiveness of the face stimuli t (224) = −0.16, p = .87, variance in participant ratings of the face stimuli’s attractiveness t (227) = −1.05, p = .29, self-reported mate value t (227) = .65, p = .51, preference for short-term versus long-term mating t (227) = .61, p = .55, sexual risk-taking t (227) = −0.46, p = .65 and sexual motivation t (227) = −1.56, p = .12 did not vary between those who thought that they were exposed to copulin and those who did not

Summary

Introduction

Chemical communication is the most ubiquitous form of communication among organisms (Wyatt 2014). The empirical work that exists concentrates on shifts in women’s odor corresponding with shifts in their menstrual cycle (for review, Haselton and Gildersleeve 2011) These studies find that 1) men prefer the body odor of ovulating women (Doty et al 1975; Singh and Bronstad 2001) and 2) odor samples taken from women at high conception risk increase men’s testosterone (Jütte and Grammer 1997; Miller and Maner 2010, 2011), sexual arousal (Miller and Maner 2010, 2011) and risk-taking (Miller and Maner 2011; see Cerda-Molina et al 2013). We seek to replicate previous findings, and to extend upon this research by examining additional behavioral outcomes including sexual risk-taking, sexual motivation, preference for short-term versus long-term mating and self-perceived mate value

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