OUT: Human Pheromones, IN: Whole Body Odor

Smell scientists get their noses out of the armpit

Acqua di Gio by Giorgio Armani, 1998

Human pheromones were all the rage from the ‘70s through the early ‘90s. My “academic sister” Martha McClintock published her paper on menstrual synchrony in 1971. Marilyn Miglin launched a perfume in 1978 and called it Pherómone just because it sounded cool. A company called Erox claimed to have identified an active human pheromone and even sponsored a scientific conference in Paris to unveil it in October 1991. There were books like The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality (1995), and Love Scents: How Your Natural Pheromones Influence Your Relationships, Your Moods, and Who You Love (1998).

And then the air began to leak out of the balloon. Google Ngram results for “pheromone” tell the story succinctly: following a double peak in 1986 and 1991, usage of the term drifted down and is now at early 1970s levels. McClintock’s finding was challenged on methodological grounds and couldn’t be reliably replicated. Erox launched a perfume but the active ingredient claims never amounted to anything. Pherómone was a beautiful and successful fragrance and Miglin went on to enjoy a long career in the industry.¹

It was smell scientist Richard Doty who delivered the coup de grâce in 2010 with his thoroughly researched book The Great Pheromone Myth. I gave it a positive review on my old Blogger blog (Out of the shadows: I no longer believe in human pheromones).

A parallel trajectory can be found in basic research on human body odor. During the pheromone years scientists were keen on isolating the single hypothetical molecule that men found arousing or the one that women would find irresistible in men. All other bodily odors were considered a distraction. Test subjects were told not to smoke, use perfume or deodorant, eat garlic, etc. for days before scent collection. Sterile gauze pads were placed in their armpits to obtain “pure” sweat samples. All for naught—the silver bullet was never found.

The pheromone tide having receded, we are beginning to see studies that examine body odor in all of its everyday, deodorant-wearing, perfume-infused, garlic emitting glory. A good example is the new report by Gaby, et al., The interactive role of odor associations in friendship preferences. Their subjects were female Cornell undergraduates who agreed to have their faces photographed and who wore T-shirts for 12 hours to collect their scent—other than not smoking or drinking alcohol, they were told to maintain their usual hygiene routine.

The variable of interest was a 7-point rating scale of “friendship potential” (FP). Participants rated photos of the others for FP. Then they rated each T-shirt for FP. Finally, they all took part in a “speed-friending event” where, after a 4-minute face-to-face interview, they rated the other women for FP.

So what was the outcome? That women can sniff their way to same-sex friendship. Specifically, scent-based FP ratings predicted the FP ratings from the in-person interactions, a result that remained even when the photo-based FP ratings were accounted for statistically. In a neat twist, the researchers had the women re-rate the T-shirt odors after the in-person event. They found that the live-interaction FP judgements were predictive of odor-based FP judgements made after the event. In other words, meeting someone in person can re-shape olfactory judgements of their body odor.

In their report, Gaby et al., refer to the T-shirt-based whole body odor as “diplomatic odor” which they contrast with “natural odor,” i.e., the ostensibly pure, unspoiled scent of torso and armpits. Here I think they miss the mark. “Diplomatic odor” is an odd, nonintuitive term. I would call it instead Totality of Person Odor (TOPO), and contrast it with Intrinsic Body Odor (IBO).

In any case, I think Gaby et al. are on to something. It is time to look at body odor in a more ecologically valid way. Totality of Person Odor takes a wider view and doesn’t presuppose the existence of magic bullets, er, pheromones.

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Jessica M. Gaby, Gul Gunaydin, & Vivian Zayas, The interactive role of odor associations in friendship preferences. Scientific Reports 15:11228, 2025).

1. Sadly, her husband Lee Miglin was murdered in 1997 by the same guy who went on to kill Gianni Versace.