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Research Article
Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 2School of Psychology, Flinders University of South
Australia, Adelaide, Australia; 3Department of Dermatology, University of Pennsylvania; 4Hobart and William Smith
Colleges; and 5Department of Animal Biology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
ABSTRACTHuman
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Russell, 1976; Singh, 2001). Supporting evidence for this possibility comes from earlier studies demonstrating that humans
can easily discriminate among body odors from different people.
For example, individuals are capable of distinguishing kin and
nonkin, or their own odors and those of other people (Porter et
al., 1986; Russell, 1976). Even newborn infants are more likely
to orient to odors donated from the breast of their own mother
rather than an unfamiliar mother; thus, it appears that the ability
to detect differences in human body odors begins early in life
(Porter & Winberg, 1999).
In many mammals, pheromones modulate, and sometimes
determine, reproductive behaviors (Vandenbergh, 1989; Wyatt,
2003). For example, odors of the opposite sex are highly attractive, especially for males when females are in heat (Nyby,
1982; Rasmussen, Lee, Roelofs, Zhang, & Daves, 1996). If
humans use the odors of others, at least in part, to select a mate
(Jacob, McClintock, Zelano, & Ober, 2002; Ober, Weitkamp, &
Cox, 1999; Ober et al., 1997; Weitkamp & Ober, 1999), then
sexual orientation may influence preferences for human odors or
production of these odors.
Although 2 to 10% of the population is lesbian or gay male
(Binson et al., 1995; Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Sell, Wells, &
Wypij, 1995), prior investigations of human body odors have
been carried out without regard for the sexual orientation of
participants. We sought to determine whether there is a difference in preference for axillary odor from heterosexuals, lesbians, and gay men and whether preference for these odors is
influenced by an odor evaluators gender and sexual orientation.
In this study, heterosexuals, lesbians, and gay men indicated
their preference for the odors of underarm sweat collected from
other heterosexuals, lesbians, and gay males.
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Y. Martins et al.
METHOD
Odor Donors
Odor donors were 24 individuals (age range 5 1835), 6 from
each of the following four categories: heterosexual males, gay
males, heterosexual females, and lesbians. Participants were
recruited from the University of Pennsylvania and the greater
Philadelphia community. Lesbians and gay males were recruited
from gay and lesbian groups in the community or were friends of
participants who were recruited from these groups.1
Potential donors rated their current sexual behavior (past 12
months) on the 7-point Kinsey Scale (Kinsey et al., 1948),
ranging from 0, exclusively heterosexual with no homosexuality,
to 6, exclusively homosexual with no heterosexuality. Only those
individuals describing their current sexual behavior as exclusively heterosexual, lesbian, or gay were invited to participate
in the study proper. Participants received $75 for completing
the odor-donation phase.
Donors underwent a 9-day ( 2 days) wash-out phase during
which they used odorless soaps and shampoo, did not shave their
armpits, and eliminated items such as garlic, cumin, and curry
from their diets. After this phase, donors wore cleaned, cotton
gauze pads in the armpits throughout the day for 3 days,
changing to a new pad each day (for details about this procedure,
see Preti, Cutler, Huggins, Garcia, & Lawley, 1986), while
taking part in their normal daily activities. Although the environment that individuals were in (e.g., work, school) while collections took place was not controlled, the specific environment
from which the odors were collected was controlled (i.e., an
unshaven armpit that had not been washed since the previous
evening). Any differences in the odor collections due to differences in lifestyle activities were likely negligible and randomly
distributed across all groups of odor donors. Pads were kept in
participants freezers in cleaned, labeled glass jars (provided by
us) until their return to the laboratory. The pads were then frozen
at 80 1C, to maintain the integrity of the chemosignal. After all
pads were returned to the laboratory, each pad was cut into six
pieces. Each test bottle was created by taking two pieces from
each of three donors within a group and combining them in an
odorless, plastic squeeze bottle with a flip-top lid. Hence, we
created unique odors within each odor class, so that no individual odor would be recognized or exert undue influence on our
results. The selection of donor pads to be used in each squeeze
bottle was randomized, with the constraint that all donors be
1
We did not assess the AIDS-HIV status of our odor donors, and it is possible
that individuals who have AIDS-HIV smell different from those who do not have
this disease, in part because of their compromised immune systems. Such a
difference could have affected the results we describe in this report. We have
attempted to determine what the AIDS-HIV rates are in the populations from
which we sampled odor donors, but have learned that accurate data do not exist.
It should be noted, however, that the odor stimuli used over the course of the
study were prepared in a manner designed to minimize the influence of any single
donor (see the Method section for details). Therefore, we believe it unlikely that
the inclusion of an HIV-positive individual among the donors would have produced a systematic bias responsible for the results.
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Forced-Choice Preferences
For each odor pair tested, we calculated the total number of
times (over all 11 trials per pair) that a particular odor was
chosen. These data were then averaged for each gender and
sexual-orientation group. If there were no detectable differences
in the body odors across the donor groups, one would expect the
evaluators to have determined their preferences by chance, with
participants choosing one odor in half of the forced-choice
preference trials and the competing odor in the other half of the
trials. Our data refute this outcome: Participants clearly exhibited preferences for specific odors at greater than chance
levels (see Fig. 1).
It should be noted that all analyses were first carried out on all
lesbian participants, and then separate analyses were performed
for lesbians from ages 18 to 25 and those over the age of 25. We
did this because prior research on lesbians has demonstrated
that the development of a lesbian orientation is qualitatively
different from the development of sexual orientation in other
groups (i.e., heterosexual males and females and gay males).
More specifically, lesbians begin questioning their sexual orientation later than other individuals and are more likely to begin
questioning their individual identity because of ideological
beliefs or exposure to lesbian sexual orientation than because of
sexual or emotional attraction to same-sex others. Essentially, a
lesbian orientation is typically established later than the sexual
orientation of other groups (Diamond, 1998; Henderson, 1984;
Kitzinger & Wilkinson, 1995; Rust, 1993). The only result that
changed when the data were analyzed separately for the two age
groups was the forced-choice preference between odors from gay
males and odors from lesbian females.
Heterosexual males, heterosexual females, and lesbians
preferred odors from heterosexual males over odors from gay
males (Fig. 1); gay males preferred odors from other gay males
(all comparisons significant at p < .01). Heterosexual males,
heterosexual females, and lesbians over the age of 25 (but not
those ages 1825) preferred odors from lesbians over odors from
gay males (Fig. 1); gay males preferred the odors of other gay
males (all comparisons significant at p < .01). In trials comparing odors from heterosexual females and lesbians, all but
heterosexual males significantly preferred the odors of heterosexual females (Fig. 1). Finally, gay males preferred odors from
heterosexual females over those from heterosexual males (Fig.
1); the other groups of evaluators showed no significant preference for either one of these odors.
2
Because of a computer malfunction, these ratings were not collected from the
first 15 participants.
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Fig. 1. Results for the two-alternative forced-choice preference judgments. The key in the upper half of the figure explains how to interpret the
results for the four groups of odor evaluators, seen in the lower half of the
figure. Results are represented by circles in a square array, with the position of each circle indicating the odor-donor group and the lines between
neighboring circles (dotted vs. solid) indicating whether the comparison
between those two odors showed that evaluators had a significant preference for one over the other. There are five possible circle sizes, though only
four are used. If the odor of a donor group was significantly nonpreferred
in comparisons with the odors of the two groups at the neighboring corners, it is represented by the smallest circle (score of 2). If the odor of a
donor group was significantly preferred over the odors of the two groups at
the neighboring corners, it is represented by the largest circle (score of
12). Intermediate-size circles represent scores of 11 (significantly preferred over one of the comparison odors, but not both) and 0 (either significantly different from both comparison odors, but in opposite
directionsindicated by an asteriskor not significantly different from
either comparison odor). The plus sign indicates that analyses were performed using data only from lesbians over the age of 25 (see the text for the
rationale).
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Y. Martins et al.
TABLE 1
Mean Strength-of-Preference (SoP) Ratings (With Standard Deviations) and Number of
Participants Choosing a Specific Odor a Significant Number of Times
Evaluator group
Choice and statistic
Heterosexual
males
Gay
males
Heterosexual
females
Lesbian
females
4.63
2.24
15
2.17
1.47
3
6.11
2.95
14
5.35
2.48
11
4.03
3.17
2
5.63
1.77
8
3.98
0.82
2
3.54
4.77
6
1.57
1.15
6
0.42
3.13
2.53
4
2.51
1.74
6
4.85
2.15
2
4.32
3.29
8
0.96
5.61
3
6.04
2.10
7
1.16
0.64
2
6.17
4.26
2
2.55
2.86
2.47
3.70
7
5.20
2.69
10
3.48
3.76
9
4.27
2.33
9
4.90
1.02
8
4.04
4.07
1.42
4
4.62
2.16
12
0.59
7.64
3
5.72
2.38
15
6.39
1.75
8
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bians, but when forced to choose between the latter, they preferred odors from lesbians over those of gay males. Heterosexual
males showed a similar, though not equivalent, pattern of responding: They exhibited no preferences in choices between the
odors from other heterosexual males versus those from heterosexual females, or between the odors from the two female groups.
They did, however, clearly prefer the odor from lesbians over the
odor from gay male donors.
Table 1 presents the number of participants who chose a
specific odor within each odor pair on a significant proportion of
the trials (i.e., at least 9 of the 11 trials). These data provide
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Perceived Intensity
To rule out the possibility that individuals perceptions of the
intensity of the different odors accounted for these results, we
3
For these analyses, F tests involving the odor-class variable were calculated
using the Greenhouse-Geisser correction because Mauchlys test of sphericity
was significant for this variable, W(5) 5 .32 for intensity and .51 for pleasantness, ps < .01.
698
Perceived Pleasantness
We also performed a 4 4 split-plot ANCOVA on individuals
pleasantness ratings of the odors.3 This analysis revealed that
participants perceptions of the pleasantness of the odors varied
depending on the interaction between participants group membership and the odor class, F(6, 126) 5 2.24, p < .05, Zp 2 5 .10.
No other significant effects were found. These results suggest
that odor choice is driven primarily by perceptions of perceived
odor pleasantness or unpleasantness and that the perceived
pleasantness is determined, in part, by the perceivers gender
and sexual orientation (Fig. 2).
DISCUSSION
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Y. Martins et al.
Fig. 2. Mean pleasantness ratings of each odor class as a function of odor evaluators group
membership.
linked set of genes that regulates the immune system (for reviews, see Singh, 2001; Yamazaki, Singer, Curran, & Beauchamp, 1999; and Yamazaki, Singer, & Beauchamp, 1998
1999). Historically, studies have focused on the relationships
among an individuals odor preference, his or her HLA type,
the HLA types of the odor donors, and, in at least one report,
the HLA types of the odor evaluators parents (Jacob et al.,
2002; Ober et al., 1997, 1999; Weitkamp & Ober, 1999). These
studies have shown that individuals tend to prefer odors from
other individuals who have some HLA alleles identical to their
own, but avoid odors from individuals with only one or no allele
matches, as well as individuals with identical HLA alleles.
Furthermore, these experiments provide initial evidence that
the MHC may play a role in mate choice among humans (Ober
et al., 1997, 1999), as it does in other mammals (Yamazaki et al.,
1999).
Interestingly, research examining the biological mechanisms
underlying human sexual orientation has implied that there may
be a relationship between the MHC and sexual orientation. The
most pervasive (and influential) statement regarding sexual
orientation is the neurohormonal hypothesis (Ellis & Ames,
1987), according to which homosexuality results from exposure
to atypical androgen levels in utero. Although evidence for this
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