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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Does scent attractiveness reveal women's ovulatory timing? Evidence from signal detection analyses and endocrine predictors of odour attractiveness
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume 289, No. 1970, Article 5862374, Year 2022
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Description
Odour cues associated with shifts in ovarian hormones indicate ovulatory timing in females of many nonhuman species. Although prior evidence supports women's body odours smelling more attractive on days when conception is possible, that research has left ambiguous how diagnostic of ovulatory timing odour cues are, as well as whether shifts in odour attractiveness are correlated with shifts in ovarian hormones. Here, 46 women each provided six overnight scent and corresponding day saliva samples spaced five days apart, and completed luteinizing hormone tests to determine ovulatory timing. Scent samples collected near ovulation were rated more attractive, on average, relative to samples from the same women collected on other days. Importantly, however, signal detection analyses showed that rater discrimination of fertile window timing from odour attractiveness ratings was very poor. Within-women shifts in salivary oestradiol and progesterone were not significantly associated with within-women shifts in odour attractiveness. Between-women, mean oestradiol was positively associated with mean odour attractiveness. Our findings suggest that raters cannot reliably detect women's ovulatory timing from their scent attractiveness. The between-women effect of oestradiol raises the possibility that women's scents provide information about overall cycle fecundity, though further research is necessary to rigorously investigate this possibility. © 2022 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.
Authors & Co-Authors
Emery Thompson, Melissa
United States, Albuquerque
The University of new Mexico
Roney, James R.
United States, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
Statistics
Citations: 6
Authors: 2
Affiliations: 2
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1098/rspb.2022.0026
ISSN:
09628452
Participants Gender
Female