It has been shown that it is the combination of perfume with one’s own body odor that generates the pleasant and personal effect.
Everyone is attracted to someone for very different reasons and reasons. And, for tastes, colors … and smells! It is well known that body odor influences when choosing a partner. And you don’t have to do many experiments to be clear that the bad smell helps to rule it out.
Evolutionarily and in different species, including humans, the pair is chosen to optimally complement our own genes, especially those related to the immune system. This is intended to make our offspring resistant to more pathogens.
Body odor informs about our immune system
And here comes the curious thing: although in our species there are hundreds of different forms of genes that encode the immune system, in each person some of these variants participate in providing their own and particular natural aroma that we give off and accompany us. That is, body odor speaks directly about our immune system.
Back in the 90s of the last century, scientists from the Max Planck Institute carried out the so-called “sweat shirt experiments”. They consisted of the girls smelling the T-shirts with which the boys, without having used perfume, deodorant or aromatic soap, had slept two nights in a row. Thus they discovered that women prefer the smell of men who have genetic variants of the immune system different from their own.
What’s more, the researchers also showed that genetic variants of the immune system influence the perfume ingredients that both women and men choose. In other words, we select the perfume in such a way that it intensifies the immunogenetic olfactory signal itself. Who’d say!
The personal aroma and the perfume that identifies us
A few years later, a series of tests were carried out in which each participant was able to recognize a specific perfume: the one to which particles of their immune system that characterize their own body odor had been added. And, of course, from what was discussed above, they also selected that perfume as their favorite.
From a neurobiological point of view, the magnetic resonance images showed that, when each participant smells their own immune particles, a specific region of the brain is activated: the right medial frontal cortex.
And this is very interesting, since it indicates that humans also have a structure that helps us, taking into account the smell, to decide which partner to choose. In other species, the responsible organ is the so-called vomeronasal organ; through it, pheromones are detected, for example. In humans, this organ is barely developed and is not functional.
The scent of attraction and the scent of success
With this suggestive title, a scientific article was published recently in which the influence of olfactory stimuli, from delicate fragrances to bad smells, on the perception we have of others is analyzed.
It indicates that there is a whole range of body odors that influence what we perceive of another person: if she is attractive to us, what her age may be, if she is stressed or suffers from anxiety, if she is ill and even personality traits .
Thats not all. In addition, both the presence of an aroma and the absence of a bad smell influence the confidence that each person has in himself, which undoubtedly affects how attractive he is to others.
This brings us to the well-known importance of smell in the impression that we can give in a meeting or in a job interview. Interestingly, men score worse for people who wear perfume or eau de toilette, while women do the opposite.
What perfume do we choose?
In general, it is thought that we use a perfume to mask body odor and to please more. However, it has been shown that it is the combination of perfume with one’s own body odor that generates the pleasant and personal effect. Of course, in the right proportion that we are sure to be able to find.
Grandma Matilde used to say: “Girl, that perfume smells better on you than it does on me.”
In this sense, we perceive a mixture of our own scent with a favorite perfume as more pleasant than our own scent with another perfume chosen at random, even if both fragrances are generally considered equally pleasant.
This implies that the use of a perfume goes beyond avoiding the bad smell and that we choose the perfume that best combines with our personal smell. Hence, as the experts say, the particular taste that everyone has to choose the perfume.
What if we don’t use perfume? Perhaps the explanation is in that interesting phrase from the novel Perfume, by Patrick Süskind:
What he coveted was the fragrance of certain people: those, extremely rare, who inspire love.
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
