What fertile women really want: a macho man with a strong odour

[abdulhakeem]

Wed 6 Jul 2005
IAN JOHNSTON
SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT

Key points
• Scientists find women attracted to different men over ovulation cycle
• Study says 'dominant men' attractive short-term, but 'carers' long-term
• Study criticised for adopting approach of genetic determinism to attraction

Key quote
"We like to think we are thinking human beings, but most of us are not that all the time - especially after we've had a few drinks" - Christine Northam, of Relate marriage guidance

Story in full WOMEN are biologically programmed to adopt a "mixed mating strategy" of having affairs with dominant men when they are most fertile and sleeping with their caring husbands for the rest of the time, according to a new study.

Scientists at universities in Liverpool and Prague tested women's response to the smell of underarm sweat. They found that women in a relationship who were ovulating were most attracted to the aroma of a dominant man's armpit. Single women and those not ovulating were not overly aroused.

The researchers concluded that this was a sign of an evolutionary strategy of "mixed mating" in which women formed relationships with caring, sharing types likely to be good husbands and fathers, but also had affairs with dominant men with good genes.

In the report, due to be published today by the Royal Society (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/landing.asp?id=2), the three scientists - an anthropologist, a behavioural ecologist and an evolutionary biologist - wrote: "We found a positive correlation between male psychological dominance and odour-sexiness when rated by women in their fertile phase, but not in other phases of their cycle.

"A strong association between male odour-sexiness and psychological dominance was only found for non-single women in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle."

They added: "A mixed-mating strategy may have evolved in females - they prefer genetically superior males for short-term or extra-pair sexual partners while, at the same time, they seek males who are more willing to invest in their offspring as long-term or social partners."

The scientists used questionnaires to rate 48 men for dominance and they then wore cotton pads under their armpits for 24 hours. These were given to 30 women, who rated them for sexiness, masculinity and intensity.

One of the authors, the anthropologist Dr Jan Havlicek, of Charles University in Prague, admitted that smell was just one factor, but added: "Our and other recent evidence strongly suggest that body odour plays a major role in mate choice. It is, however, difficult to compare with other cues, as facial appearance and smell operate to some extent on an unconscious level."

He also said that while women in relationships might be attracted to a dominant man's smell, they would usually resist the urge to sleep with him.

Christine Northam, of the marriage guidance body Relate, said many people would not like the findings. "We like to think we are thinking human beings, but most of us are not that all the time - especially after we've had a few drinks."

The psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos, a columnist for Cosmopolitan and author of The Man Manual, said the report's conclusions were the kind of theories liked by evolutionary psychologists, "if you go along with the belief that the whole point of everything is to ensure your genes' survival".

But she said social psychologists would point to other factors.

"It's not as simplistic as if I smell someone, I'm going to jump on him. A woman might find a man who's really dominant interesting, but I doubt everything else she's been socialised into believing will go out of her head and she'll have sex with him."

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=745962005

[abdulhakeem]

Ovulating women favour dominant men's smell

Published online: 6 July 2005
doi:10.1038/news050704-6
Michael Hopkin (http://www.nature.com/news/about/aboutus.html#Hopkin)

Sniff test suggests when, and with whom, women are most likely to cheat.

Women are most likely to cheat on their long-term partner when they are at their most fertile, and they tend to choose genetically superior men for their fling. That's the claim of a study by Czech researchers, which found that the smell of a socially dominant male is most exciting to women in stable relationships, especially on days when they are ovulating.

Jan Havlícek, of Charles University in Prague, and his colleagues asked 48 men to complete a questionnaire, rating statements such as "I am the life of the party", in order to score the volunteers' social dominance. The researchers also asked them to wear cotton pads under their arms to collect sweat.

A group of 65 women then smelled the pads and rated the sexiness and masculinity of the scent. Women in the middle week of their menstrual cycle, the point at which fertility is at its peak, tended to prefer the smell of the men who scored highest on the dominance quiz. This preference was not shown by women at other points in their cycle.

What's more, the effect was only significant for women in long-term relationships, the researchers report in the journal Biology Letters1 (http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050704/full/050704-6.html#B1). This shows that both menstrual phase and relationship status can have an effect on which men women tend to prefer, says Havlícek.

Mix it up

The results support a theory of mixed mating strategies, which argues that women should want different things from different men at different times. Females are expected to pair up with the males most likely to invest in parental care, but any affair is likely to be conducted with successful males who, although they may not be good dads, provide good genes.

"Other studies have shown that women are more likely to get involved in extra-pair affairs during their fertile period," Havlícek says. "We suppose that in such cases more socially dominant males would be preferred."

The idea is difficult to assess, because male quality is difficult to judge. Other researchers have used measures such as the 'ruggedness' of a man's face, or the symmetry of his features.

Havlícek and his team argue that a high dominance score is a reflection of high mating quality. "Such individuals are more likely to reach high social status," he says. "And this may reflect high genetic quality."

Perhaps the most controversial part of the study is the claim that women find the smell of sweaty cotton pads enticing. "Some raters found particular body odours sexy; others simply found them 'not repellent'," Havlícek admits. "But laboratory conditions are rather unnatural, and the smells would be judged more positively in more relevant, that is, intimate, conditions."

References

Havlicek J., Roberts S. C. & Flegr J. Biol. Lett., doi:10.1098/rsbl.2005.0332 (2005).
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050704/full/050704-6.html

[abdulhakeem]

Study: Fertile women want dominant men

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, July 7 (UPI) -- A Czech study finds that women who are ovulating tend to prefer the smell from the armpits of dominant men.

Jan Havlicek of Charles University in Prague got 48 men to complete questionnaires that measured their social dominance, Nature reports. The men were also asked to collect their underarm sweat by wearing cotton pads.

A group of 65 women then sniffed the pads.

Havlicek and his colleagues reported in Biology Letters 1 that women who were ovulating -- and thus at their most fertile -- and were in stable relationships rated sweat from the men with high scores for dominance highest. Other women did not show this preference.

The researchers suggested that while women are likely to pair up with men they believe will be good fathers they might be hardwired to stray with men with good genes.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20050707-20573600-bc-czech-snifftest.xml

[abdulhakeem]

Human behaviour

The smell of power
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition


Odour and mating preferences

WHAT'S a girl to do when faced with the choice between a powerful action man who has great DNA but is likely to love her and leave her, and a carpet-and-slippers kind of bloke who will hang around and bring up the kids but may not be Mr Right in the genes department? Well, ideally, she should fool the latter into bringing up the former's children. And a piece of evidence that this is exactly what happens emerged this week from a research group led by Jan Havlicek of Charles University, in Prague.

Dr Havlicek and his colleagues were interested in discovering whether women are attracted by the smell of dominant men. A preference for the scent of dominants has been found in the females of other species, and scent is known to be important in attraction between the human sexes in other contexts, such as avoiding inbreeding. The attractiveness of body odour is also correlated with the attractiveness of the body it came from, even when presented separately from that body. But whether the odour of power—or, at least, of powerfulness—is attractive to women had not been established.

Deciding who is and is not a dominant male is the first question, of course. To do this, the researchers turned to one of the world's most widely used experimental animals, the hard-up male student. Their subjects were asked to rate such things as their tendency to correct others, to want to control conversations, and to surpass others' accomplishments, in a questionnaire designed to assess their dominance. In their paper in Biology Letters the researchers laconically observe that dominance in this questionnaire “corresponds to the scale ‘Narcissism’ in the widely used California psychological inventory”.

After baring their all in this manner, the volunteers had to wear cotton pads under their armpits for 24 hours to collect the sweat therefrom, and also had to lay off curries, beer, cigarettes and similar delights of student life that might affect the smell of their sweat. Surprisingly, given these constraints, the researchers managed to persuade 48 men to volunteer.

Compared with this, the female volunteers had it easy. They had to smell the pads and rate them for “intensity”, “sexiness” and “masculinity”. Okay, perhaps not that easy. They also had to vouchsafe whether they were single or in an on-going relationship with a man, and to submit to a saliva test that would show the phase of their menstrual cycle.

The upshot of the trial was that women did, indeed, find the odour of dominants sexier than that of wimps—but only in special circumstances. These circumstances were first that the woman was already in a relationship and second that she was in the most fertile phase of her cycle. In other words, dominant males' scent was only more attractive at the point where a woman could both conceive and cuckold her mate. Which, given previous studies that show dominant men are indeed more likely than others to leave a woman holding the baby, makes perfect sense.

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4149493

[abdulhakeem]

What fertile women really want: a macho man with a strong odour

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=745962005

i suppose they dont mean this type of men when they talk about "strong" odour:

Iranian woman seeks divorce from smelly man (http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51760)

besides, in a german article about the study havlicek stated that it would be interesting to know if they would achieve the same results in i.e. argentina or india.