Attract Pheromones

A pheromone is a chemical that is either secreted or excreted by a member of a species in order to create a social or physical response within other members of that same species. These pheromones are used by many species as a method of remote communication. For example, there are pheromones that will trigger an attack response, a follow response, or even a sexual response. It is pheromones that identify food trails for insects and it is pheromones that an Africanized honey bee will leave on a victim as a signal of where the other bees should attack.

While entomologists may find all of this fascinating, for the rest of the world the interest in pheromones is on their impact between humans. While most advertisements involving pheromones focus on sexual attraction, it is not beyond reason to say that people are interested in pheromones for all of the ways in which they can be used to influence behaviors, feelings, and actions.

From the first studies on pheromones and mammals through modern day findings it was initially thought that pheromones work through the vomeronasal organ. The vomeronasal organ is a chemosensory organ that is found within the nasal septum, at its base. There is some debate about the interaction of the vomeronasal organ in adults, but its mere existence has formed the foundation for much of the human pheromone research. Other researchers have determined that they do not need an operable vomeronasal organ to verify findings that pheromones have an affect on humans. For these researchers, observing the affect is enough to justify their publishing study findings. Understanding how the affects are formed, that is to them, the subject for future studies.

Pheromones In Our Sweat

While much of the scientific community was debating whether pheromones could impact sexual behavior, Dr Winifred Cutler, a behavioral endocrinologist was able to isolate and identify the existence of pheromones in human sweat. She, along with a research team, were able to show that when underarm sweat was separated from the underarm, that pheromones remained.

This finding was important to Cutler because it validated her studies from years earlier that speculated about the affects of human pheromones but could not prove their existence. Her original study revolved around showing the effects of regular sexual activity and menstrual cycle regularity. Her study speculated that it was the pheromone interaction that contributes to this phenomenon and it was not until years late in 1986 when she was able to prove the existence of pheromones within humans.

These studies by Cutler mirrored other studies by a University of Chicago researcher, Martha McClintock. McClintock, like Cutler, made research finding that speculated on the affect of pheromones without being able to prove their existence. McClintock built on her previous research after Cutler using the proof of the existence of pheromones to validate the impact that pheromones had on ovulation. McClintock was able to show that menstrual cycles could be speed up or slowed down depending on the time within their overall cycle they were allowed to sniff pheromones. This led to the understanding of the impact of male sweat, the pheromones in that sweat, and its linkages to regular menstrual cycles.

This is all highly relevant to the effect of pheromones on sexual attraction because feelings of desire and the wanting of sexual activity is affected by the menstrual cycle which in itself is affected by pheromones. Science has made the link.

Secondary Pheromone Studies

Subsequent to the above referenced studies a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience in 2007 connected the smelling of androstadienone, a pheromone found in male sweat, a direct effect on producing and maintaining higher levels of cortisol in women. While increases cortisol levels are not directly associated with attraction of arousal, it does show the interrelationship between the male pheromone and the female response. This response has now been proven to have an impact on the endocrine balance of others, which can lead to enhanced or elevated mood.

This connection between the smell of a pheromone and the hormonal affects on the opposite sex has lead researchers to further validate the connections between pheromones and attraction, intimacy, and arousal. There has been additional research that has made preliminary connections between sexual attraction and the linkages between that attraction within same sex and opposite sex relationships. These finding are preliminary, but because the study was able to isolate variables as distinct as homo and heterosexual attraction the researchers were in fact able to isolate pheromones and prove their impact on attraction between all types of relationships, hetero and homosexual alike.

The Scents of Attraction

It has long been established that scents have an impact on mood and feelings. Sometimes these scents bring back anchored memories from our pasts locked in our subconscious and other times these scents bring about a new response that has not roots in our psyche but simply interacts with our brain in a particular way. Perfume and cologne manufacturers have known this for decades as have aromatherapists If you have ever had a particular scented perfume or cologne that absolutely draws you in or makes you have feelings of sexual desire, then you know the power a scent can have over your mind and body.

This is the same theory behind the science of pheromones. The sense of smell represents 20% of the ways in which we interact with the outside world. While some of us rely on our sense of vision, touch, and hearing; it is the sense of smell that circumvents our conscious mind and directly stimulates feelings within our subconscious. Consider food as an example. Were it not for your sense of smell, most food would taste the same. The smell is a major part of taste. This is how pheromones work. They are a natural by product of individuals and they trigger natural responses. Just as sensual touch and physical attraction can stimulate arousal and intimacy so can the sense of smell. Especially when those smells trigger a reaction that is within our deep down psychological and genetic memory, a scent of a pheromone that triggers a response that is beyond conscious analysis and yet it is a response that our primitive nature has kept with itself for thousands of years. It is this sort of primitive animal attraction that is deeply seated in our subconscious that is brought out with pheromones.

Smell can have a direct impact on attraction. This is a fact that most individuals know subjectively and perfume and cologne companies know objectively. Scientists have studied the ways in which smells impact attraction for decades. Most of the time, smells are simply emotional anchors that a person has within themselves that psychologically triggers a specific reaction in that recalls a past feeling, memory, or experience. This is why there are so many different types of colognes and perfumes. Each smell can trigger a different reaction in different individuals. This is why some individuals are aroused and drawn to members of the opposite sex that are “wearing” a specific scent.

These scent based attractions have their roots in our most basic of survival instincts. In fact, when researchers move beyond the psychological memory and anchors that specific scents bring to the surface of different individuals they find that there are chemicals and hormones that enter the body intranasally that do not have a scent and yet they have an effect on arousal and attraction.

Pheromones The Unscented Smell of Attraction

Pheromones are unscented chemicals that are naturally produced by the body. These chemicals can signal to other individuals a persons identity, attractiveness, and even sexual receptivity. The pheromones are natures way of evening the playing field, making certain males more attractive to certain females at different times within their ovulation cycles.

Study after study has shown that when pheromones are breathed in through the nasal cavity they have an impact on the way women view men. These studies have used pictures of men, stories of men, and even live men to gauge the impact of the pheromones. Research has proven that with the presence of pheromones, women find men more attractive and more sexually appealing than they did without the presence of pheromones. These studies controlled all outside variables and the overall findings were that the simple presence of pheromones made the majority of the women studied have more feelings of arousal toward the same men that they had been introduced to on a prior occasion. In other words, with the only factor changing in the study was the presence of pheromones, the same men were found to be more sexually appealing to the same women.

The reason for this change in attraction has been attributed to the effect that pheromones have on the hormones within the woman. Pheromones have been proven to have a major impact on ovulation cycles of women. This impact has been studied in several different ways all of which came to the same conclusion, pheromones themselves impact women in different ways at different stages of their ovulation cycle.

Therefore pheromones do affect women in making them more sexually attracted to a man than they were without the presence of pheromones and the amount of this change is regulated by the stage of the menstrual cycle they are in at the time of the study. This then means to the average man that using pheromones to enhance their impact on women is not something that can be targeted toward a single woman unless that man knows the stages of that womans menstrual cycle. But if a man is going to be in the presence of more than one woman, that man will enhance is sexual appeal to the portion of those women that are in the stage of their menstrual cycle where pheromones have the greatest impact.

Pheromones and Species Survival

The conclusion that we can make from the science behind pheromones and their impact on attraction is that pheromones play an important role in the survival of species. They make females of the species increasingly attracted to, even proactively so, those males that are giving off the most pheromones during certain points of their ovulation cycle. As a result of these females being impacted and incited to arousal and proactive seeking of a mate, the pheromone ensures that more females will find themselves pregnant and as a result further perpetuate the species.

This is important to note because pheromones are oftentimes produced within the sweat glands of the male. While the pheromones themselves are odorless, the males that were stronger and more aggressive would sweat more and therefore put off more pheromones for the females to be drawn to. This too served to make certain that even weaker females were incited to seek out aggressively seek out sexual relations with the stronger males of the species in order to have stronger offspring. The fact that the female had to be incited to be more aggressive in the seeking out of the male is because in many pack situations weaker females are kept from the strongest alpha males by stronger females. The presence of pheromones would motivate those weaker females to fight to get to that pheromone producing male in order to ensure that she too would have a chance at strong offspring.

The take away from the recent studies on pheromones is that they do have an impact on the perceived attractiveness of males to females. This attractiveness cannot be targeted to a single female as accurately as it can be targeted to a group of females all of whom are at different stages of ovulation. This is not to say that the studies did not show that females exposed to pheromones on average found the same males more sexually appealing than they did before they were exposed to the pheromones. But that the extent of this impact is modulated by the stage of ovulation each female is at the moments of exposure.

With this said, if a male were attempting to have an impact on a specific female he would likely have varied results over any 28 day period. Whereas if a male were to encounter a group of women, all at different stages of ovulation, that male would have a varied impact on the females within that group. Each of whom would find themselves more attracted to that male than if there were no pheromones present, but the extent of that enhanced attractiveness would vary from individual to individual. Either way, there would be an impact that would favor the male.

Even though it may sound less than professional, an ABC news reporter used the line that the when it comes to pheromones, the woman’s nose, knows. This is yet another report that follows those made over the years by various news outlets including ABC, CNN, and others that pheromones are effective and have been scientifically proven to enhance feelings of attraction between individuals.

Pheromones are chemicals that are odorless and are produced naturally by the body. These have a direct impact on reproduction and ovulation and at the same time, when excreted from the body and inhaled through the nose, have an impact on feelings of attractiveness and sexual appeal.

Women Find Pheromones Work On Men

This attraction goes both ways depending on the specific pheromone used. Recently a study was published in the Journal of Physiology and Behavior showed that women who used pheromones as an additive to their perfume had a marked increase in sexual attention from the same men that they were exposed to before the pheromones were added to the perfume. These study used various controls to ensure accuracy and even used a placebo group to measure specific differences. Interestingly the study did find that the placebo group also had an increase in sexual attraction, but not nearly the increase that was experienced by the group using pheromones. This was attributed to the natural pheromones that a person would give off if they were feeling and thinking they were going to be found extra appealing to the opposite sec that day.

This study was very important among the other studies on pheromones because this study was specifically directed at the impact of the pheromone on males being attracted to females, whereas most studies are focused on pheromones making men more attractive to women. It is clear that pheromones can impact either gender and that the impact has been studied and verified by science.

Pheromones Go Beyond Attraction

The above study was commissioned by Dr Winnifred Cutler, a pioneer in the study of pheromones and their impact on attraction. It was Cutler’s studies in the 1970′s that first showed the existence of pheromones within residual male sweat and it was also Cutler that later made some of the first clinical advancements in linking pheromones to ovulation and hormones in women.

Cutler was also a pioneer in many studies that proved that humans could process the existence of pheromones even though the existence of an active vomeronasal organ, the organ thought necessary to process pheromones, within humans was once the subject of heated scientific debate. While some debated the ability of the vomeronasal organ, Cutler moved beyond that organ and simply quantified proven results, without being burdened by what organ is actually processing the pheromones within study participants..

While Cutler has spent a considerable amount of time proving the impact of pheromones on attraction and sexual appeal. She also has found that pheromones have an impact on four primary life functions. These are; territorial marking, infant and mother interactions, sexual attraction, and reproductive synchronization. While territorial marking is not something that we find necessary in modern society the uses of pheromones in creating bonds between mother and child are critically important.

The evolutionary reason why there is synchronization of reproductive cycles in response to pheromones is not yet known. But the fact that pheromones have a primary impact on women in different stages of ovulation carries over to the fourth aspect of pheromones, sexual attraction.

Sexual attraction in response to pheromone production has been linked to many evolutionary processes. Whether it be the fact that at certain stages of ovulation the pheromones have an increased impact on arousal and sexual attractiveness, this leading to females attempting to mate with pheromone producing males at the proper times of ovulation. Sexual attraction as a result of pheromone production has also been theoretically linked to the connection between the production of pheromones in the sweat glands and the males that sweat the most, in some as species this is an indicator of that male being strongest, most active and healthiest of the males in the group. Therefore, the more sweat, the more pheromones, the more pheromones the more the females would find that male attractive and as a result want to mate with that male.

The speculations themselves can actually be numbered in the hundreds, but what is important to most individuals is that pheromones are effective and they can enhance a persons attractiveness. This attractiveness will be affected by the amount of attraction the individual had for that person in the first place and by the stage of ovulation that person is in when exposed to the pheromones. In other words, pheromones will not make a person irresistibly attractive to everyone, but they will make a person more attractive to others than they were before the pheromones. The amount of increased attractiveness is also impacted by the ovulation cycle of the other person.

Using Pheromones In Social Encounters

Given these scientific findings it is worthwhile to use pheromones when engaging in social situations. The pheromones themselves are odorless and if they can have an impact on a persons self confidence and reception from others, then it is worth using. Everyone wants to feel attractive and to be found appealing by others, using pheromones will help. This is not to say that a person can radically change the views others have of them by simply using pheromones, but it will enhance the attraction between those individuals. This impact will also carry over to new relationships that are formed during social events. Having an extra boost of attraction driven by pheromones is worthwhile, especially for those that need an extra boost of confidence and appeal to make their interactions memorable.

The key to using pheromones is to remember the results of the studies. The studies found that not everyone is impacted by the pheromones in the same way and those that are impacted will be impacted to different degrees dependent upon the stage of ovulation they are at during the encounter. Therefore a person should not rely on pheromones to be a miracle drug, but simply look to the pheromones as an enhancement to a situation.