Gender and sexual orientation influence preference for human body odors

Body odor may send specific signals to potential mates

Your nose may play a big role in selecting a mate according to a new study conducted by researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. They found that your preference for another person's body odor is influenced by the gender and sexual orientation of that person as well as your own gender and sexual orientation.

The study participants include 82 heterosexual and homosexual men and women. They were asked to indicate their preference for odors of sweat collected from the underarms of 24 "odor donors."

They were asked to make four comparisons, choosing between odors from (i) heterosexual males versus gay males, (ii) heterosexual males versus heterosexual females, (iii) heterosexual females versus lesbian females, and (iv) gay males versus lesbian females.

The researchers found that gay men preferred odors from gay men and heterosexual women, whereas odors from gay men were least preferred by women and heterosexual men.

Odor preferences were related to perceptions of pleasantness or unpleasentness, but not to intensity of the odor. According to the researchers, this suggests that some of the chemical attributes that contribute to body odor are related to gender and sexual orientation.

Martins comments, "We need to understand how the biological mechanisms responsible for production of body odor differs in these groups of people, who are defined by gender and gender preference. We also need to identify the factors that lead men versus women and heterosexuals versus homosexuals to perceive body odor differently."

George Preti and Christina Crabtree also contributed to the research.

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