Evidence for odour-mediated assortative mating in humans: The impact of hormonal contraception and artificial fragrances

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11310%2F19%3A10401363" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11310/19:10401363 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=mNOT95ckqJ" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=mNOT95ckqJ</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.05.002" target="_blank" >10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.05.002</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Evidence for odour-mediated assortative mating in humans: The impact of hormonal contraception and artificial fragrances

Original language description

There is substantial evidence for assortative partner preferences in humans based on physical characteristics. In contrast, evidence suggests that olfactory preferences tend to be disassortative, with people preferring body odour of potential partners who are dissimilar at key genetic loci, perhaps to gain fitness advantage through offspring heterozygosity. We compared ratings of perceived body odour similarity of real couples with those of randomly paired &apos;fake&apos; couples. Contrary to prediction, we find that odours of real partners are perceived more, rather than less, similar to each other than fake couples. However, this applied only to natural odour samples: there were no differences in similarity levels of real and fake couples&apos; samples which were collected while wearing artificial fragrances. Furthermore, in light of suggestions that hormonal contraception (HC) disrupts disassortative odour preferences in women, we compared odour similarity among real couples in which the female partner was using or not using HC at the time when the relationship began. We find that odours of HC using couples are of intermediate similarity between non-using and fake couples, suggesting that HC use during partner choice could affect odour-influenced assortment. We also examined the association between relationship satisfaction and perceived similarity of unfragranced odours of real couples. We found that these are positively correlated in male partners but negatively correlated in the female partners, indicative of a sex difference in the relative favourability of odour similarity in partner preference. Finally, by comparing odour similarity ratings with those given by perfumers using a novel olfactory lexicon we found evidence that similarity judgements were based on the Spicy/Animalic aspects of individual odour profiles. Taken together, our results challenge the conventional view that odour-mediated partner preferences in humans are typically disassortative.

Czech name

—

Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

50101 - Psychology (including human - machine relations)

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA18-15168S" target="_blank" >GA18-15168S: Effect of parental characteristics on mate choice</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Physiology &amp; Behavior

ISSN

0031-9384

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

210

Issue of the periodical within the volume

OCTOBER

Country of publishing house

US - UNITED STATES

Number of pages

9

Pages from-to

112541

UT code for WoS article

000488654900027

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85065577155