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

Kód výsledku v 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>

Výsledek na webu

<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>

Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

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

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

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.

Název v anglickém jazyce

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

Popis výsledku anglicky

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.

Druh

J_imp - Článek v periodiku v databázi Web of Science

CEP obor

—

OECD FORD obor

50101 - Psychology (including human - machine relations)

Projekt

<a href="/cs/project/GA18-15168S" target="_blank" >GA18-15168S: Vliv rodičovských charakteristik na výběr partnera</a><br>

Návaznosti

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

Rok uplatnění

2019

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

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

Název periodika

Physiology &amp; Behavior

ISSN

0031-9384

e-ISSN

—

Svazek periodika

210

Číslo periodika v rámci svazku

OCTOBER

Stát vydavatele periodika

US - Spojené státy americké

Počet stran výsledku

9

Strana od-do

112541

Kód UT WoS článku

000488654900027

EID výsledku v databázi Scopus

2-s2.0-85065577155