First, “the effects we see are not dramatic,” Sobel says. The search for human pheromones has been hampered by two obstacles. And adults can often tell by smell whether the person who produced perspiration was anxious or not. Newborns preferentially scoot toward the scent of breasts. Women preferred men whose DNA was different enough from their own that it would increase the likelihood of producing a child with a robust immune system.
Researchers asked women to rate the odors of T-shirts worn by different men. One’s nose can also help identify a genetically compatible mate. In one 2005 study, gay men given anonymous samples of sweat preferred the scent of gay men, and heterosexual men fancied the scent of women. “It just means we haven’t found one yet.” In fact, some researchers suspect that if there is a turn-off pheromone, as Sobel’s team says, there’s likely to be a turn-on pheromone. “That doesn’t mean a human sex pheromone doesn’t exist,” Preti is quick to add. Researchers (as well as fragrance companies) have been hoping to find a human sex pheromone for decades, but so far the search has failed, says George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. If a fertile female gets a whiff of these molecules, she’ll present her rear to the male, a universal gesture in wild pig patois that means, “Let’s start a family.” Airborne molecules that elicit a reaction in a member of the same species are called pheromones, and the most famous ones are potent aphrodisiacs, like androstenone and androstenol in the saliva of male boars. This study offers some of the most recent evidence that people perceive all sorts of interesting things about one another through olfaction.
Apparently the tears sent a message that romance was off the table. The tears did not elicit empathy in a standard lab test, but they did reduce the men’s sexual arousal and testosterone levels.
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He and his colleagues had women watch a sad movie scene, collected their tears and placed samples of the unidentified fluid under men’s noses. “You might think-we did-that tears might create empathy,” says Noam Sobel, a neurobiologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. But the smell of tears, researchers say, has a different effect. The sight of someone in tears might make you feel concerned. The result was a reduced sexual arousal and testosterone levels. After playing a sad movie scene for a group of women, researchers collected their tears and placed the unidentified fluid under men's noses.