Why the 'love hormone' may be less rosy and more rosé than we thought

First paragraph: A decade ago, a revolutionary paper showed that a hormone called oxytocin can actually make us trust other people. This spawned a flurry of research that revealed oxytocin’s potential to boost social interactions. Now a new study has shown that the hormone is actually very similar to alcohol, a well-known social lubricant. However, just like alcohol, it has a dark side.https://theconversation.com/why-the-love-hormone-may-be-less-rosy-and-more-rose-than-we-thought-4210

Warning: the truth behind handshake-sniffing may bum you out

First paragraph: As we all know, a firm handshake is important in making a good first impression. It’s a sure sign of physical strength and, rightly or wrongly, we use it make all manner of judgements about character, personality and sincerity. Access this article on The Conversation website at: https://theconversation.com/warning-the-truth-behind-handshake-sniffing-may-bum-you-out-3844

Perfume could be the riskiest gift you'll ever buy

First paragraph: When it comes to making careful plans to impress that significant other, certain things can seem like musts. Classy restaurant – check. Romantic atmosphere – check. Best suit or little black dress – check.  Access this article on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/perfume-could-be-the-riskiest-gift-youll-ever-buy-3760

It’s a myth that humans’ sense of smell is inferior to that of other animals – here’s why

First paragraph: Conventional wisdom has it that humans have a poorer sense of smell than most other animals. Sure, we can smell – most of us appreciate the aroma of our morning coffee or a delightful fragrance, and we’re able to detect burning toast or a gas leak. But we have nonetheless long been thought to be relative weaklings in the animal kingdom’s league of olfactory excellence, which puts dogs and rodents near the top

Evidence that androstadienone, a putative human chemosignal, modulates women’s attributions of men’s attractiveness

Considerable research effort has focused on whether specific compounds found within human body odor influence the behavior or physiology of other individuals. The most intensively studied is 4,16-androstadien-3-one, a chemical which is known to modulate mood and have activational effects in the sympathetic nervous system in a context-dependent manner, but whose action in mate-choice contexts remains largely untested. Here we present evidence that this androgen steroid may modulate women’s judgments of men’sattractiveness in an ecologically valid context. We tested the effects of androstadienone at a speed-dating event in which men and women interacted in a series of brief dyadic encounters. Men were rated more attractive when assessed by women who had been exposed to androstadienone, an effect that was seen in two out of three studies. The results suggest that androstadienone can influence women’s attraction to men, and also that research into the modulatory effects of androstadienone should be made within ecologically valid contexts

Face and voice attractiveness judgments change during adolescence

Attractivenessjudgments are thought to underpin adaptive mate choice decisions. We investigated how these judgmentschange during adolescence when mate choice is becoming relevant. Adolescents aged 11–15 evaluated faces and voices manipulated along dimensions that affect adults' judgments of attractiveness and that are thought to cue mate value. Facial stimuli consisted of pairs of faces that were more or less average, more or less feminine, or more or less symmetric. The adolescents selected the more average, symmetric, and feminine faces as more attractive more often than chance, but judgments of some facial traits differed significantly with rater age and sex, indicating a role of development in judgments of facial cues. Vocal stimuli consisted of pairs of voices manipulated to raise or lower perceived pitch. The older but not younger girls selected the lower-pitched male voices as more attractive at rates above chance, while the younger but not older boys selected the higher-pitched female voices as more attractive. Controlling for rater age, increased pubertal development was associated with increased selection of lower-pitched boys' voices by girls and decreased selection of feminized male faces by boys. Our results are the first to demonstrate that adolescents show somewhat similar attractivenessjudgments to adults in age-matched stimuli and that age, sex, and pubertal development have measurable effects on adolescents' attractivenessjudgments. They suggest that attractivenessjudgments in humans, at least for some traits, are facultatively calibrated to the individual's life stage, only reaching adult values upon sexual maturity when mate choice decisions become relevant

Voice pitch preferences of adolescents: Do changes across time indicate a shift towards potentially adaptive adult-like preferences?

An evolutionary approach to attractiveness judgments emphasises that many human trait preferences exist in order to assist adaptive mate choice. Here we test an adaptive development hypothesis, whereby voice pitch preferences indicating potential mate quality might arise or strengthen significantly during adolescence (when mate choice becomes adaptive). We used a longitudinal study of 250 adolescents to investigate changes in preference for voice pitch, a proposed marker of mate quality. We found significantly stronger preferences for lower-pitched opposite-sex voices in the older age group compared with the younger age group (using different sets of age-matched stimuli), and marginally increased preferences for lower-pitched opposite-sex voices comparing within-participant preferences for the same set of stimuli over the course of 1 year. We also found stability in individual differences in preferences across adolescence: controlling for age, the raters who had stronger preferences than their peers for lower pitched voices when first tested, retained stronger preferences for lower-pitched voices relative to their peers about 1 year later. Adolescence provides a useful arena for evaluating adaptive hypotheses and testing the cues that might give rise to adaptive behaviour

Do women really like taken men? Results from a large questionnaire study

Nonindependent mate choice occurs when a female (focal female) is influenced in her mate choice by the choices of other females (model females), though sometimes male choice can be similarly influenced. In humans the study of this phenomenon has been almost exclusively experimental, with the perceived level of attractiveness of opposite-sex faces being influenced by manipulation of the attractiveness of their putative partner. As useful as these experimental studies are, the question of how validly they capture real-life social processes has not been addressed. Here we present the results of a questionnaire study which analyzed responses from 206 male and 175 female participants, both singles and people in a relationship. As predicted, paired men reported more opposite-sex interest than paired women, whereas the opposite was true for single respondents. Furthermore, the amount of opposite-sex interest reported by paired men correlated with the attractiveness of their partner, whereas this correlation between partner attractiveness and opposite-sex interest did not hold for female respondents. We suggest that this contrast is related to sex differences in benefits of nonindependent mate choice arising from sex-specific reproductive constraints. Our results are consistent with the kinds of effects recorded in laboratory studies, and provide evidence that non-independent mate choice plays at least some role in actual relationship dynamics

Mutual olfactory recognition between mother and child

The ability of infants to recognize their mother is an important factor in the development of mother-infant social relationships. Infants must be able to distinguish her from other individuals before they form strong maternal attachment, and learning individual characteristics of the child likely helps to cement the mother’s emotional bonding with the child. Existing evidence demonstrates that very young infants can discriminate their mother’s odour and that this facilitates the onset and duration of breastfeeding, but it is not known whether this ability is maintained after weaning. Here, we investigated recognition of mothers by children of toddler age (3 – 5 years), and maternal recognition of her child, through body odour. Nineteen mother-child pairs wore clean t-shirts for 2 consecutive nights, and both mothers and children were then tested for correct identification of their respective mother/child’s odour from an odour line-up of 6 samples. We found that mothers were able to recognise their child’s odour at rates above chance, but toddlers were not. Neither breastfeeding duration nor hours spent together on an average day were associated with correct odour recognition by either mothers or children. However, higher perceived pleasantness of their child’s odour during testing was associated with higher identification success, suggesting a possible cue to correct identification in mothers. Mothers who correctly identified their child’s odour were also more likely to correctly identify the sex of odour donors. Our study contributes to the growing literature suggesting that odour may be important in maternal-child attachment

Mate quality bias: Sex differences in humans

In mate choice copying, a male is more likely to be chosen by other females simply by being observed mating. A recent finding is that women are influenced in their assessments of men by the phenotypic quality of males' sexual partners. We recently proposed that the term 'mate quality bias' should be used to differentiate this phenomenon from 'mate choice copying'. Here, under the guise of a dating preferences survey we replicated and extended some earlier results. We found that when presented to female raters, men are more desirable dates when they are depicted as having had relatively attractive (versus relatively unattractive) former partners, an effect that appears to be moderated by a second variable, namely the former partner's age. We did not find evidence for this bias effect when men rate women whose profiles have been similarly manipulated. These findings suggest the operation of a sex-specific mate choice mechanism