Love may be blind, but it does smell a bit. That, says an Austrian research team, is the not-so-secret weapon that women use on men in the mating game.
The University of Vienna team, led by Professor Karl Grammer, says females enhance their attractiveness by exuding substances called pheromones, which affect sexual behavior. "It’s part of the chemical warfare between the sexes -- a very nice trick played by women," Grammer claims.
The researchers tested their theory with 55 men by showing them photos of women and playing recordings of female voices, then asking them to rate their attractiveness. When the men did the rating while inhaling female smells, they reported to the British Psychological Society, the values changed.
These odor-based sexual signals tend to lessen a man’s ability to judge a woman’s attractiveness on other criteria such as looks or voice. But Grammer’s team issued a cautionary note: women on the Pill do not exude these pheromones -- which could mean, says one critic, that "they are missing out in the race for a mate."
