November 21, 2011 • 22 mins
What are pheromones, exactly? Do they affect levels of attraction in humans? Listen in as Caroline and Cristen explore the science behind pheromone myths, and why pheromones don't work for humans.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From House stu works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin kristen Um. Maybe
(00:22):
you've seen this stuff online or read about it in
ladies magazines about pheromone perfumes and creams that are supposedly
going to attract mates willy nilly and blind them to
what we really look like and what our personalities really are.
They're just going to bring them from all sides. Oh yeah,
there's also that it reminds you of that seen an
(00:44):
Anchorman where Paul Red's character pulls out that black panther
cologne that I think is supposed to be made of
some kind of pheromone. Right, Well, it turns out, and
all of this reading that we have done that unless
you're a moth or some kind of butterfly or aunt,
perhaps a pig, pheromones aren't going to do much for you.
(01:07):
They might not. And if you are considering purchasing one
of those pheromone perfumes, uh, you might want to rethink
because chances are the active ingredient is a vaginal secretion
from a Reeseus monkey. I cringed when I read that.
Did you all just cringe because I cringed. I cringed
(01:28):
a little bit. Uh. So, with that said, getting getting
them monkey secretions out of the way, So let's back
up a minute and talk about maybe a timeline of pheromones,
because the question we're asking today is do human pheromones exist?
And that human distinction is very important, as we will
(01:51):
soon learn, right. Um, A lot of people have done
research into insect pheromones um and they thought, you know,
like maybe this could play a part in human attraction.
But to the people who coined the term pheromone where
Peter Carlson and Martin Lucier uh, And they came up
with that word in nineteen fifty nine, which is derived
from the word the Greek words for it to carry
(02:12):
and to excite, So it's carrying excitement you're excited about
your fellow moth or elephant. And there are two major
types of pheromones. One is a primer pheromone, which causes
physiological changes like hormonal effects, and then there are releaser pheromones,
which will produce rapid behavioral effects such as mating. So
(02:34):
when these naturalists, in going back to the eighteen seventies,
noticed the reaction of male moths to female moths, they
thought something must be going on here, right, Actually, Carlson
and Lucia were doing work with termites apparently, and I
had no idea. Apparently termites have a cast system. Oh
(02:55):
so they were doing work to figure out why and
how this cast system was held up. And they figured
out that these animals were giving off triggers and so
pheromones as as we think of them now, Um, it's
the same definition as from the nineteen fifties when they
came up with all this great stuff. Pheromones describe a
substance that an animal gives off to trigger a specific
(03:18):
behavioral or developmental reaction and another member of the species.
So you know, how to ants find their way to
a piece of candy. They're they're talking to each other.
They have the little pheromones, a little sense and the
little signals that tell each other, Okay, there's food over here,
we need to head this way. And they're leaving behind
trails for the other ones behind to follow. Right. So
I think if you, if you try to like get
(03:38):
some water something and wipe away part of the ant trail.
They get lost because you're wipe away the pheromone and
it's also mean. Um. But but this is it's not
just insects. There was you know, there was a study
earlier than than Um Carlson and Lucier on um peacock
moss where a researcher had a female peacock moth under
(03:59):
a bell jar kind of said this mesh, do hicky
and it she attracted like a hundred and fifty male moths,
which is disgusting. I'm terrified of maths. Well, and these
kind of moths too were pretty large. Imagine imagining you
as in like a scene from the Berg, but it's
just full of moths. Um. Yeah, the entomol just Joseph A.
(04:24):
Littner and that French naturalists Jean Enri fabre Um who
had the peacock moths were first interested in this kind
of insect attraction as a way to control insects. So
pheromone research really started as pest control, right, yeah, because
if you can uh stop whatever is making them want
(04:46):
to create more moths and more pen worms and more cockroaches,
then you'll have fewer of them, and it's actually worked
in some instances. So in nine for instance, pheromones were
used in more than a million traps to ca sure
more than four billion beetles in the forests of Norway
and Sweden because they were trying to curb an epidemic
(05:07):
of bark beetles, right, and actually it really saved those forests. Yeah,
four billion beetles. I'm gonna put that in your room
with all the mobs. Um, I will have a panic attack.
And now you transformed it to Indiana Jones and the
Temple of do I. I. You know, I always think
about how I would never put my hand in that
thing where Willie has a sticker hand and then pull
the LeVert. Now it would never happen. But um, okay,
(05:30):
So all this inside research was was pretty was pretty clear.
You know, obviously there are these chemicals, these signals that
buds are putting out to attract each other. Um, but
what about mammals. So there's a pig pheromone that turns
a sal's attention solely to mating, and they were able. Well,
the pheromone stuff for people might not be that great
of an invention. It might not actually work. It does
(05:51):
work for pigs. Farmers actually have the thing that they
can spray and it gets the pig ready for whatever
is about to happen. And that would be probably an
example of the release are fair a moon that produced
the rapid behavioral effects. Um and elephants secrete some hormones
from a gland in their forehead region and it attracts
(06:11):
it like the stronger it is, and the stronger the
smell of the urine, the more it attracts estress female well.
And then there was a study UM at the Worcester
Foundation for Experimental Biology, and this was one of the
initial studies trying to figure out whether or not they
could identify pheromone compounds and mammals. And they again it's
(06:34):
always there's a lot of vaginal secretion and pheromone research.
They took a male golden hamster and just rub them
down with a female golden hamster vaginal secretions and put
them in a cage and then brought other male golden
hamsters into the cage to see what would happen. Lo
and behold, the male golden amsters were turned on by
(06:57):
the vaginal secretions and tried to mate with the other
male golden answers. So it's not that they so much know.
It's not like they knew he was a male. It's weird.
It's like the pheromones are telling them, this is who
you need to mate with, and so it didn't matter
that he was a boy. Hamster biology, and it's all
because they were sensing this through something called the vomo
(07:21):
nasal organ or the v n O. Right, it's actually
independent from our main olfactory system. So it's not like
we are. When I say we, I kind of mean everybody.
It's not like we are smelling pheromones. It's more like
a sensory thing. So so animals, insects, they all have
this thing. But we actually lost ours. We we don't
(07:42):
have the tissue anymore. Um, it's located the what is it,
the v n O for sure, because that's a lot
easier to say than bomaro nasal organ um. It is
located above the roof of the mouth, and it evolved
to detect large molecules and molecules that are dissolved in liquids,
which is why your dog licks other dogs as the
way of saying, hey, what's up, what have you been
(08:04):
up to? Yeah? That's new in your life. Well, animals
will preen each other exactly, sir Vienno kicking in right.
But you know, we are not dogs, so thankfully we
don't lick each other to say hello because that's disgusting,
or honey bets or moss. We're none of these things. Um. Yeah,
like I said, we don't have a functioning vin o.
(08:24):
We have. The tissue is embryos, which is interesting, UM,
but it disappears after birth, so we don't have it.
And yet there are these series of studies done that
indicate that some kind of pheromone induced behavior is going on.
And one of the biggest things that UM, one of
(08:44):
the most landmark studies that we have to mention that
we brought up in our podcast long time ago on
whether or not girls or women excuse me, periods will
will sync up. Ine Martha mcclinock, who's a University of
Chicago psyche cologist, has the studies UM saying that yes,
menstrual synchrony also known as a meclinic effect, does indeed exist.
(09:09):
Because she charted the menstrual patterns of a hundred and
thirty five college girls living together in a dorm found
some overlaps and presto, it happens, and she assumed that
there had to be some kind of hormonal influence. And
then we have me clinic in coming back with this
study finding that women who were exposed to cotton pads
(09:31):
soaked with under armed secretions. By that we mean sweat
collected from donors undergoing their first and second phases of
their menstrual cycles would influence the menstrual cycle of the
women who had the pads under their noses. Interesting. I mean,
we're obviously, you know, we evolved from bacteria as having
(09:54):
this response to chemicals. Chemicals tell us to do things
that maybe we're not aware that we actually want to do. Whatever,
I'm kind of stuff explanation. But basically, so, we can't
smell them and we don't seem to have a functioning
receptor for them. But UM research has shown that we
we do. You know, there are effects that we feel
(10:14):
from UM from some sort of hormone, and there are
a couple of compounds that are maybe thought to be pheromones.
It just hasn't been proved yet, right, UM, we we
should probably bring up the dirty T Shirt study, which
is UM one that we've talked about before in the podcast,
and the first one took place, and I want to
say that they've gone back and retested this um in
(10:37):
more recent years. But basically, they had heterosexual women sniff
dirty undershirts belonging to men without seeing their faces, and
they would look at the guys and read their attractiveness.
And long story short, the men with the who smelled
the most attractive and their dirty undershirts ended up having
(10:58):
the most different gene complex of the women who found
them the most attractive. Right, you're looking for somebody who's
not your brother, exactly, avoiding avoiding uh, inbreeding. So maybe
it's something to do with sweat. Could be there's something
in our sweat glands. Yeah, and it aliating magic. Yeah,
(11:19):
and it's a it. Well, there's a steroid and a
derivative of testosterone called androwsta dinone uh, and men have
more of this than women, and so they think thought
for a while that perhaps this testosterone derivative is the pheromone, right,
But in two thousand seven that kind of went out
(11:42):
the window. Right. Andreas Keller, a geneticist at Rockefeller University,
discovered that really it kind of depends depending on your
old factory jeans. You could either find that chemical pleasant,
you could find it completely repulsive, or you would just
not even be able to detect it at all. So
it's really kind of a a singular you know, it
depends on your nose. Yeah, although we we gotta put
(12:05):
nose in quotes, because remember, pheromones, although they're often characterized
as these uh innate smells that we somehow sense, we
aren't really we aren't processing them in our noses. And
again we're also saying that, uh, there is no complete
scientific proof that pheromones human pheromones really exist, and certainly
(12:26):
not in the way that they might in silkworm moths.
And this is probably because, as the Howard Use Medical
Institute points out, compared to insects whose behavior is stereotyped
and highly predictable, mammals such as we are our independent,
ornery and complex. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's so much
more to um to love and sex among humans than
(12:52):
just like I lack your chemicals. You know. Tristram Wyatt
of Oxford University is kind of like, in doing all
this research, I he must be the pheromone guy. Loves pheromones.
Um So Whyatt said that it's it's so much more
than just visual and social signals. You know, we're emotional people.
(13:12):
We have preferences and prejudices. Um, you know, it might
matter that I like the same music as someone, or
we come from the same background, uh than if if
your chemicals are are good smelling. Yeah, and it makes
sense that we would be uh possibly driven to those
those different gene complexes to ensure, you know, that we
(13:36):
could have healthier offspring. But yeah, I mean boiling everything
down to one love potion number nine seems I don't
know that also kind of take the take the fun
out of things. But going back to that Randy Hudder
Epstein article in Slate, and she also wrote UM a
similar article for Psychology Today. She h she was so
(13:57):
frustrated with seeing all of these UM recommendations in Shape magazine,
on your Tango dot com and in surprise here Cosmopolitan
about how to enhance your pheromonal attraction or attractive powers.
I should say, um. And for instance, Shape magazine recommends
(14:18):
that couples work out together and don't shower immediately because
you continue to release attraction boosting hormones for an hour
after you finished exercising. Um. Also, you know, like, don't
put perfume on your neck, breasts, or genitals because that
will quote unquote hide the important pheromones that drive men wild.
(14:39):
And my favorite from Cosmos, just don't wear underwear because
and this is all this is a direct quote, because
owners and your pheromones will more easily waft into the
air and be picked up subliminally by the primitive part
of his brain. I don't I don't want anything wafting
not I mean, I don't want to refer back to
(15:00):
our douche podcast or anything. But let's we we all
saw what happened with Lindsay Lohan and Britney speakers. Just
put underwear on from Caroline Right. Well, no, Actually, one
of my favorite quotes regarding all of this, all this
hui with the pheromone perfume, is from Stewart Firestein of
(15:20):
Columbia University. He said, let's just say someone sold me
this pheromone so that I could attract women. There's no
supermodel pheromone. So I put this stuff on, and I'm deluged,
deluged with horny women of all sorts, and the only
thing they have in common is they all have a nose.
What good is that. I don't know. I mean, I
have a lot of guy friends who would love to
(15:41):
be deluged with women. And if you're still wondering, you know,
like what the what the science is saying, just just
take it from the book title. All Right. Richard Dody,
director of University of Pennsylvania's Smell and Taste Research Center,
wrote the book entitled really sums it all up, The
Great Pheromone myth. Yeah, he says, it's a mythology. It
(16:01):
plays into how we want there to be something more
primal and special about the attraction we have to someone, right,
and it's not again like the science can be a
little a little tricky to untangle because they're not saying
that there aren't some kind of chemical signals that go
on between people but not. But we're not in the
(16:24):
same way as silkworm r right, And we have yet
to really nail something down for certain so well. I
mean we've pinpointed stuff in and insects. It's it's it
hasn't been as easy and human. And I think it
was also interesting that killer study, Caroline that you mentioned
that found that if there is well the found that
people's reactions to that compound in sweat varies from person
(16:45):
to person. Um, just kind of like attraction in general,
in various from person to person. But there was one
UM Swedish study from two thousand five, just to throw
out one more kind of pheromone related study, uh, that
that had an interesting hypothesis about pheromones the hypothalamus and
(17:07):
possibly biological basis for homosexuality. Right, yeah, this was actually
really interesting. UM. The study looked into the effects on
the brain of two chemicals. There was a testosterone derivative
produced in men sweat and estrogen light compound in women's urine,
both of which they thought, are you know, could be
potential pheromones. Um. These two chemicals activate the brain in
(17:29):
a very different way than normal sense do. So it's
not like you're smelling freshly bake cookies or something and
you're like it's something more um, subliminal. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway,
the estrogen light compound just activated the typical scent receptors
and women you know, didn't do anything special, but in
men it lit up the hypothalamus, a region of the
(17:51):
brain that governs sexual behavior. Now for the male sweat
chemical that activated the hypothalamus in women, but just the
usual uptors in men. However, they repeated the study and
included gay men as a third group, and that had
interesting results. They found that gay men responded to the
two compounds in the exact same way that women did
(18:14):
so when they smelled the male sweat, in other words,
it left the same area of the hypothalamus did in
the women. And they tested this too on gay women,
and for some reason, the New York Times articles sort
of vague about it, but the researchers said that the
results needed further assessment before they could offer any types
(18:34):
of conclusions. And so again this is just another example
of yes, we're seeing some kind of behavioral or physiological change,
but they're not exactly sure what genetic components are are
causing it, so it's all sort of up in the
air unless you're a moth. You're a moth listening to
(18:55):
our podcast or fascinating silk worms out there everywhere, Like
this explains everything. I just can't get that lady moth
out of my head. But again, just remember if you
are attempted to pick up some of that pheromone guaranteed perfume,
just think about racist monkey vaginal secretions active ingredient. So
(19:18):
with that, we invite your thoughts on pheromones. Mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address,
and I've got an email here from Nathan and it's
in response to our episode on romance novels and he
offers this multicultural insight. He writes, one of the largest
(19:40):
romance fiction markets in Japan is for the kind of
choose your own adventure style of games called bi Show Joe.
Since nine two men have been reading through novel length
romance stories to develop serious relationships with imaginary characters in
a very similar way to how women build imaginary relationships
in American and European romance novels. There may not be
(20:02):
as much scientific literature about the relationship between these two
because of their separation between industries, but really isn't It
is an important topic not to forget. If y'all can
find research for the multicultural aspects of your topics, they
would definitely appeal to a wider audience. So I've never
heard of the show Joe. Very interesting. Okay, this is
(20:24):
an email from Jamie about our HPV episode. She said,
I do want to clarify something you said on the
show that West Virginia and d C have HPV mandates
for middle school girls. While the word mandate is accurate,
it is misleading given the number of exemptions parents can get.
In both these states slash municipalities, parents can choose not
to vaccinate their daughters on their soul discretion without any
(20:47):
religious or medical reason, a so called philosophical exemption. Given
that anyone who wants can exempt, it's not fair to
necessarily call these bills mandates. Rather, the purpose of the
bill is to provide vaccines to children who don't have
access to high quality medical care. By mandating vaccines, families
are more aware of their necessity. The state insures that
vaccines are made available for all children, and most important
(21:09):
of all, low income children can receive mandated vaccines for
free through the Federal Vaccines for Children program. Thus, the
purpose of these bills is not to force children to
be vaccinated, a common misperception in the general press, but
rather to provide vaccines to those children who can to
slip through the cracks of the medical system. Thanks Jamie
and I have to offer a quick correction right now
(21:30):
from our Drag Queens podcast and believe we referenced the
stonewall riots happening in San Francisco. They were in New York.
It was in New York. Yeah, are we thinking we Yeah?
We were just read a lot of stuff. It happened,
not mixed up. So if you have anything to send
our way again, email addresses moms Stuff at how stuff
(21:51):
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(22:12):
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Are you
Brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From House stu works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin kristen Um. Maybe
(00:22):
you've seen this stuff online or read about it in
ladies magazines about pheromone perfumes and creams that are supposedly
going to attract mates willy nilly and blind them to
what we really look like and what our personalities really are.
They're just going to bring them from all sides. Oh yeah,
there's also that it reminds you of that seen an
(00:44):
Anchorman where Paul Red's character pulls out that black panther
cologne that I think is supposed to be made of
some kind of pheromone. Right, Well, it turns out, and
all of this reading that we have done that unless
you're a moth or some kind of butterfly or aunt,
perhaps a pig, pheromones aren't going to do much for you.
(01:07):
They might not. And if you are considering purchasing one
of those pheromone perfumes, uh, you might want to rethink
because chances are the active ingredient is a vaginal secretion
from a Reeseus monkey. I cringed when I read that.
Did you all just cringe because I cringed. I cringed
(01:28):
a little bit. Uh. So, with that said, getting getting
them monkey secretions out of the way, So let's back
up a minute and talk about maybe a timeline of pheromones,
because the question we're asking today is do human pheromones exist?
And that human distinction is very important, as we will
(01:51):
soon learn, right. Um, A lot of people have done
research into insect pheromones um and they thought, you know,
like maybe this could play a part in human attraction.
But to the people who coined the term pheromone where
Peter Carlson and Martin Lucier uh, And they came up
with that word in nineteen fifty nine, which is derived
from the word the Greek words for it to carry
(02:12):
and to excite, So it's carrying excitement you're excited about
your fellow moth or elephant. And there are two major
types of pheromones. One is a primer pheromone, which causes
physiological changes like hormonal effects, and then there are releaser pheromones,
which will produce rapid behavioral effects such as mating. So
(02:34):
when these naturalists, in going back to the eighteen seventies,
noticed the reaction of male moths to female moths, they
thought something must be going on here, right, Actually, Carlson
and Lucia were doing work with termites apparently, and I
had no idea. Apparently termites have a cast system. Oh
(02:55):
so they were doing work to figure out why and
how this cast system was held up. And they figured
out that these animals were giving off triggers and so
pheromones as as we think of them now, Um, it's
the same definition as from the nineteen fifties when they
came up with all this great stuff. Pheromones describe a
substance that an animal gives off to trigger a specific
(03:18):
behavioral or developmental reaction and another member of the species.
So you know, how to ants find their way to
a piece of candy. They're they're talking to each other.
They have the little pheromones, a little sense and the
little signals that tell each other, Okay, there's food over here,
we need to head this way. And they're leaving behind
trails for the other ones behind to follow. Right. So
I think if you, if you try to like get
(03:38):
some water something and wipe away part of the ant trail.
They get lost because you're wipe away the pheromone and
it's also mean. Um. But but this is it's not
just insects. There was you know, there was a study
earlier than than Um Carlson and Lucier on um peacock
moss where a researcher had a female peacock moth under
(03:59):
a bell jar kind of said this mesh, do hicky
and it she attracted like a hundred and fifty male moths,
which is disgusting. I'm terrified of maths. Well, and these
kind of moths too were pretty large. Imagine imagining you
as in like a scene from the Berg, but it's
just full of moths. Um. Yeah, the entomol just Joseph A.
(04:24):
Littner and that French naturalists Jean Enri fabre Um who
had the peacock moths were first interested in this kind
of insect attraction as a way to control insects. So
pheromone research really started as pest control, right, yeah, because
if you can uh stop whatever is making them want
(04:46):
to create more moths and more pen worms and more cockroaches,
then you'll have fewer of them, and it's actually worked
in some instances. So in nine for instance, pheromones were
used in more than a million traps to ca sure
more than four billion beetles in the forests of Norway
and Sweden because they were trying to curb an epidemic
(05:07):
of bark beetles, right, and actually it really saved those forests. Yeah,
four billion beetles. I'm gonna put that in your room
with all the mobs. Um, I will have a panic attack.
And now you transformed it to Indiana Jones and the
Temple of do I. I. You know, I always think
about how I would never put my hand in that
thing where Willie has a sticker hand and then pull
the LeVert. Now it would never happen. But um, okay,
(05:30):
So all this inside research was was pretty was pretty clear.
You know, obviously there are these chemicals, these signals that
buds are putting out to attract each other. Um, but
what about mammals. So there's a pig pheromone that turns
a sal's attention solely to mating, and they were able. Well,
the pheromone stuff for people might not be that great
of an invention. It might not actually work. It does
(05:51):
work for pigs. Farmers actually have the thing that they
can spray and it gets the pig ready for whatever
is about to happen. And that would be probably an
example of the release are fair a moon that produced
the rapid behavioral effects. Um and elephants secrete some hormones
from a gland in their forehead region and it attracts
(06:11):
it like the stronger it is, and the stronger the
smell of the urine, the more it attracts estress female well.
And then there was a study UM at the Worcester
Foundation for Experimental Biology, and this was one of the
initial studies trying to figure out whether or not they
could identify pheromone compounds and mammals. And they again it's
(06:34):
always there's a lot of vaginal secretion and pheromone research.
They took a male golden hamster and just rub them
down with a female golden hamster vaginal secretions and put
them in a cage and then brought other male golden
hamsters into the cage to see what would happen. Lo
and behold, the male golden amsters were turned on by
(06:57):
the vaginal secretions and tried to mate with the other
male golden answers. So it's not that they so much know.
It's not like they knew he was a male. It's weird.
It's like the pheromones are telling them, this is who
you need to mate with, and so it didn't matter
that he was a boy. Hamster biology, and it's all
because they were sensing this through something called the vomo
(07:21):
nasal organ or the v n O. Right, it's actually
independent from our main olfactory system. So it's not like
we are. When I say we, I kind of mean everybody.
It's not like we are smelling pheromones. It's more like
a sensory thing. So so animals, insects, they all have
this thing. But we actually lost ours. We we don't
(07:42):
have the tissue anymore. Um, it's located the what is it,
the v n O for sure, because that's a lot
easier to say than bomaro nasal organ um. It is
located above the roof of the mouth, and it evolved
to detect large molecules and molecules that are dissolved in liquids,
which is why your dog licks other dogs as the
way of saying, hey, what's up, what have you been
(08:04):
up to? Yeah? That's new in your life. Well, animals
will preen each other exactly, sir Vienno kicking in right.
But you know, we are not dogs, so thankfully we
don't lick each other to say hello because that's disgusting,
or honey bets or moss. We're none of these things. Um. Yeah,
like I said, we don't have a functioning vin o.
(08:24):
We have. The tissue is embryos, which is interesting, UM,
but it disappears after birth, so we don't have it.
And yet there are these series of studies done that
indicate that some kind of pheromone induced behavior is going on.
And one of the biggest things that UM, one of
(08:44):
the most landmark studies that we have to mention that
we brought up in our podcast long time ago on
whether or not girls or women excuse me, periods will
will sync up. Ine Martha mcclinock, who's a University of
Chicago psyche cologist, has the studies UM saying that yes,
menstrual synchrony also known as a meclinic effect, does indeed exist.
(09:09):
Because she charted the menstrual patterns of a hundred and
thirty five college girls living together in a dorm found
some overlaps and presto, it happens, and she assumed that
there had to be some kind of hormonal influence. And
then we have me clinic in coming back with this
study finding that women who were exposed to cotton pads
(09:31):
soaked with under armed secretions. By that we mean sweat
collected from donors undergoing their first and second phases of
their menstrual cycles would influence the menstrual cycle of the
women who had the pads under their noses. Interesting. I mean,
we're obviously, you know, we evolved from bacteria as having
(09:54):
this response to chemicals. Chemicals tell us to do things
that maybe we're not aware that we actually want to do. Whatever,
I'm kind of stuff explanation. But basically, so, we can't
smell them and we don't seem to have a functioning
receptor for them. But UM research has shown that we
we do. You know, there are effects that we feel
(10:14):
from UM from some sort of hormone, and there are
a couple of compounds that are maybe thought to be pheromones.
It just hasn't been proved yet, right, UM, we we
should probably bring up the dirty T Shirt study, which
is UM one that we've talked about before in the podcast,
and the first one took place, and I want to
say that they've gone back and retested this um in
(10:37):
more recent years. But basically, they had heterosexual women sniff
dirty undershirts belonging to men without seeing their faces, and
they would look at the guys and read their attractiveness.
And long story short, the men with the who smelled
the most attractive and their dirty undershirts ended up having
(10:58):
the most different gene complex of the women who found
them the most attractive. Right, you're looking for somebody who's
not your brother, exactly, avoiding avoiding uh, inbreeding. So maybe
it's something to do with sweat. Could be there's something
in our sweat glands. Yeah, and it aliating magic. Yeah,
(11:19):
and it's a it. Well, there's a steroid and a
derivative of testosterone called androwsta dinone uh, and men have
more of this than women, and so they think thought
for a while that perhaps this testosterone derivative is the pheromone, right,
But in two thousand seven that kind of went out
(11:42):
the window. Right. Andreas Keller, a geneticist at Rockefeller University,
discovered that really it kind of depends depending on your
old factory jeans. You could either find that chemical pleasant,
you could find it completely repulsive, or you would just
not even be able to detect it at all. So
it's really kind of a a singular you know, it
depends on your nose. Yeah, although we we gotta put
(12:05):
nose in quotes, because remember, pheromones, although they're often characterized
as these uh innate smells that we somehow sense, we
aren't really we aren't processing them in our noses. And
again we're also saying that, uh, there is no complete
scientific proof that pheromones human pheromones really exist, and certainly
(12:26):
not in the way that they might in silkworm moths.
And this is probably because, as the Howard Use Medical
Institute points out, compared to insects whose behavior is stereotyped
and highly predictable, mammals such as we are our independent,
ornery and complex. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's so much
more to um to love and sex among humans than
(12:52):
just like I lack your chemicals. You know. Tristram Wyatt
of Oxford University is kind of like, in doing all
this research, I he must be the pheromone guy. Loves pheromones.
Um So Whyatt said that it's it's so much more
than just visual and social signals. You know, we're emotional people.
(13:12):
We have preferences and prejudices. Um, you know, it might
matter that I like the same music as someone, or
we come from the same background, uh than if if
your chemicals are are good smelling. Yeah, and it makes
sense that we would be uh possibly driven to those
those different gene complexes to ensure, you know, that we
(13:36):
could have healthier offspring. But yeah, I mean boiling everything
down to one love potion number nine seems I don't
know that also kind of take the take the fun
out of things. But going back to that Randy Hudder
Epstein article in Slate, and she also wrote UM a
similar article for Psychology Today. She h she was so
(13:57):
frustrated with seeing all of these UM recommendations in Shape magazine,
on your Tango dot com and in surprise here Cosmopolitan
about how to enhance your pheromonal attraction or attractive powers.
I should say, um. And for instance, Shape magazine recommends
(14:18):
that couples work out together and don't shower immediately because
you continue to release attraction boosting hormones for an hour
after you finished exercising. Um. Also, you know, like, don't
put perfume on your neck, breasts, or genitals because that
will quote unquote hide the important pheromones that drive men wild.
(14:39):
And my favorite from Cosmos, just don't wear underwear because
and this is all this is a direct quote, because
owners and your pheromones will more easily waft into the
air and be picked up subliminally by the primitive part
of his brain. I don't I don't want anything wafting
not I mean, I don't want to refer back to
(15:00):
our douche podcast or anything. But let's we we all
saw what happened with Lindsay Lohan and Britney speakers. Just
put underwear on from Caroline Right. Well, no, Actually, one
of my favorite quotes regarding all of this, all this
hui with the pheromone perfume, is from Stewart Firestein of
(15:20):
Columbia University. He said, let's just say someone sold me
this pheromone so that I could attract women. There's no
supermodel pheromone. So I put this stuff on, and I'm deluged,
deluged with horny women of all sorts, and the only
thing they have in common is they all have a nose.
What good is that. I don't know. I mean, I
have a lot of guy friends who would love to
(15:41):
be deluged with women. And if you're still wondering, you know,
like what the what the science is saying, just just
take it from the book title. All Right. Richard Dody,
director of University of Pennsylvania's Smell and Taste Research Center,
wrote the book entitled really sums it all up, The
Great Pheromone myth. Yeah, he says, it's a mythology. It
(16:01):
plays into how we want there to be something more
primal and special about the attraction we have to someone, right,
and it's not again like the science can be a
little a little tricky to untangle because they're not saying
that there aren't some kind of chemical signals that go
on between people but not. But we're not in the
(16:24):
same way as silkworm r right, And we have yet
to really nail something down for certain so well. I
mean we've pinpointed stuff in and insects. It's it's it
hasn't been as easy and human. And I think it
was also interesting that killer study, Caroline that you mentioned
that found that if there is well the found that
people's reactions to that compound in sweat varies from person
(16:45):
to person. Um, just kind of like attraction in general,
in various from person to person. But there was one
UM Swedish study from two thousand five, just to throw
out one more kind of pheromone related study, uh, that
that had an interesting hypothesis about pheromones the hypothalamus and
(17:07):
possibly biological basis for homosexuality. Right, yeah, this was actually
really interesting. UM. The study looked into the effects on
the brain of two chemicals. There was a testosterone derivative
produced in men sweat and estrogen light compound in women's urine,
both of which they thought, are you know, could be
potential pheromones. Um. These two chemicals activate the brain in
(17:29):
a very different way than normal sense do. So it's
not like you're smelling freshly bake cookies or something and
you're like it's something more um, subliminal. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway,
the estrogen light compound just activated the typical scent receptors
and women you know, didn't do anything special, but in
men it lit up the hypothalamus, a region of the
(17:51):
brain that governs sexual behavior. Now for the male sweat
chemical that activated the hypothalamus in women, but just the
usual uptors in men. However, they repeated the study and
included gay men as a third group, and that had
interesting results. They found that gay men responded to the
two compounds in the exact same way that women did
(18:14):
so when they smelled the male sweat, in other words,
it left the same area of the hypothalamus did in
the women. And they tested this too on gay women,
and for some reason, the New York Times articles sort
of vague about it, but the researchers said that the
results needed further assessment before they could offer any types
(18:34):
of conclusions. And so again this is just another example
of yes, we're seeing some kind of behavioral or physiological change,
but they're not exactly sure what genetic components are are
causing it, so it's all sort of up in the
air unless you're a moth. You're a moth listening to
(18:55):
our podcast or fascinating silk worms out there everywhere, Like
this explains everything. I just can't get that lady moth
out of my head. But again, just remember if you
are attempted to pick up some of that pheromone guaranteed perfume,
just think about racist monkey vaginal secretions active ingredient. So
(19:18):
with that, we invite your thoughts on pheromones. Mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address,
and I've got an email here from Nathan and it's
in response to our episode on romance novels and he
offers this multicultural insight. He writes, one of the largest
(19:40):
romance fiction markets in Japan is for the kind of
choose your own adventure style of games called bi Show Joe.
Since nine two men have been reading through novel length
romance stories to develop serious relationships with imaginary characters in
a very similar way to how women build imaginary relationships
in American and European romance novels. There may not be
(20:02):
as much scientific literature about the relationship between these two
because of their separation between industries, but really isn't It
is an important topic not to forget. If y'all can
find research for the multicultural aspects of your topics, they
would definitely appeal to a wider audience. So I've never
heard of the show Joe. Very interesting. Okay, this is
(20:24):
an email from Jamie about our HPV episode. She said,
I do want to clarify something you said on the
show that West Virginia and d C have HPV mandates
for middle school girls. While the word mandate is accurate,
it is misleading given the number of exemptions parents can get.
In both these states slash municipalities, parents can choose not
to vaccinate their daughters on their soul discretion without any
(20:47):
religious or medical reason, a so called philosophical exemption. Given
that anyone who wants can exempt, it's not fair to
necessarily call these bills mandates. Rather, the purpose of the
bill is to provide vaccines to children who don't have
access to high quality medical care. By mandating vaccines, families
are more aware of their necessity. The state insures that
vaccines are made available for all children, and most important
(21:09):
of all, low income children can receive mandated vaccines for
free through the Federal Vaccines for Children program. Thus, the
purpose of these bills is not to force children to
be vaccinated, a common misperception in the general press, but
rather to provide vaccines to those children who can to
slip through the cracks of the medical system. Thanks Jamie
and I have to offer a quick correction right now
(21:30):
from our Drag Queens podcast and believe we referenced the
stonewall riots happening in San Francisco. They were in New York.
It was in New York. Yeah, are we thinking we Yeah?
We were just read a lot of stuff. It happened,
not mixed up. So if you have anything to send
our way again, email addresses moms Stuff at how stuff
(21:51):
works dot com. We'd also love to see you over
on Facebook, and you can follow us on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcasts, and you can check out the blog
during the week It's stuff Mom Never told You at
how Stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
(22:12):
Staff Work Staff as we explore the most promising and
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