IMPROBABLE SEX: Do Women Sexually Crave the Smell of Symmetrical Men?

From the not-yet-published book "Improbable Sex"

[Read the INTRODUCTION to the series "Improbable Sex" ]

Fifty-two young heterosexual women smelled the smells of 41 young men, in a test of whether those women preferred the smells of symmetrical men.

Steven W. Gangestad and Randy Thornhill, at the University of New Mexico, caused this test to happen. Then they published a report called "Menstrual Cycle Variation in Women's Preferences for the Scent of Symmetrical Men."

Here's their quick summary of what happened:

"This study examined whether women’s olfactory preferences for men’s scent would tend to favour the scent of more symmetrical men, most notably during the women’s fertile period. College women sniffed and rated the attractiveness of the scent of 41 T-shirts worn over a period of two nights by different men. Results indicated that normally cycling [that is, they are not using birth control pills] women near the peak fertility of their [menstrual] cycle tended to prefer the scent of shirts worn by symmetrical men. Normally ovulating women at low fertility within their cycle, and women using a contraceptive pill, showed no significant preference for either symmetrical or asymmetrical men’s scent."

A FAILURE OF ONLY ONE SHIRT

Gangstad and Thornhill gave shirts to 42 men, but encountered a minor failure: "Of the 42 participants, 41 returned their shirts on time." The experiment proceeded full blown, despite the inaction of the untimely-shirt man, whose garb and scent and influence were excluded from the adventure.

The paper supplies many details of what happened with the 52 women, 41 remaining men, and 41 shirts.

PROCEDURE FOR SMELLING A MAN

Gangstad and Thornhill tell how they took the measure of the men:

"Men reported in groups of up to three for an initial measurement session. After reading and signing an informed consent form, each was given a brief questionnaire on demographic and other information (e.g. height, weight, sexual orientation, socio- economic status of family of origin). One at a time, they were taken into an adjoining room, where the right and left sides of ten characters were measured using a digital caliper, sensitive to 0.01 mm: ear length, ear width, elbow width, wrist width, ankle width, foot breadth, and lengths of all fingers excluding the thumb."

Gangstad and Thornhill tell how they prepared the men to prepare the shirts:

"each participant was given a clean, never-worn, white T-shirt and provided explicit wearing instructions. Each was told that he should wear the T-shirt for a particular two nights (identical for all participants) while sleeping. Each was also instructed to wash his bedsheets with unscented laundry detergent (provided by us) prior to those two nights and, during the two-day period, refrain from (1) using scented soaps, deodorant, or fragrance such as cologne or aftershave, and instead use only unscented soap (which we provided); (2) eating garlic, onion, green chilli, pepperoni, pungent spices, herbs, strong cheeses, cabbage, celery, asparagus, yoghurt, and lamb; (3) drinking alcohol or using recreational drugs; (4) smoking tobacco; (5) engaging in sex with another person; or (6) sleeping with another person."

Each shirt, once it was laden with the smell of a man, got stuffed into a clean plastic bag. Each bag got an "arbitrary code number" slapped on it. The code number corresponded, in disguised form, to the man who had stinked up the shirt.

Gangstad and Thornhill tell how they prepared the women to receive the shirts: