Smell and love seem to have some connection that we can’t know, but there is always some smell that lets you know when you smell it, oh, this is the smell of love.
You may not believe it, but “taste” does have an impact on your mate choice, and our preference for taste is determined by genes.
The effect of smell on choosing a partner
Everyone can secrete a hormone – phenomenon (also known as pheromones) to form their own unique physiological smell, usually we call it body odor, also known as pheromone or pheromone.
Researchers at the University of Kentucky in the United States have also done a simple experiment: prepare some photos of men and divide them into two groups. One group is sprayed with substances containing male hormones, and the other group does not add anything. When these photos were distributed to women, women were more likely to choose hormonally sprayed photos of men, thinking they were more attractive, but in fact, the men in the non-hormone-sprayed photos were more handsome. Scientists have come to the conclusion that some substances can indeed make people feel like the opposite sex when they smell.
Numerous studies have shown that there is indeed a smell in the human body that attracts people to each other, and it will directly trigger a brain response that produces sexual arousal. But this kind of odor released from the human body, we generally can’t smell it, only others can feel it, especially between the opposite sex.
A 2017 study examined the importance of scent during interactions by conducting an interest survey of 453 people (142 heterosexual women, 161 heterosexual men, and 150 gay men). Regression analysis showed no gender differences in olfactory emphasis between heterosexual men and women. Both men and women highly value the scent aspect of a potential mate. And gay men place more value on their partner’s voice than heterosexual men.
Some studies suggest that people’s attention to the odor of a potential mate’s body may be related to the smell that transmits chemical signals for immune matching with a potential mate.
An individual’s resistance to pathogens depends on cell surface proteins encoded in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). MHC heterozygosity is advantageous in terms of resistance to multiple pathogens. As parental MHC dissimilarity increases, the probability of offspring MHC heterozygosity increases. Like some animals such as mice and fish, mates with different MHC will be preferentially selected. And this information is transmitted through chemical signals. In humans, the same mechanism appears to be at work.
So far we can see that body odor preference appears to be an important driver of mate choice, and thus the start of a relationship.