Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Jul 31;14(7):719-726.
doi: 10.1093/scan/nsz051.

A scent of romance: human putative pheromone affects men's sexual cognition

Chen Oren  1 , Leehe Peled-Avron  1 , Simone G Shamay-Tsoory  1
Affiliations

A scent of romance: human putative pheromone affects men's sexual cognition

Chen Oren et al. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. .

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that the putative human pheromone estratetraenol affects several systems underlying human functioning and appears to activate neural systems that are known to affect sexual behavior. In this study, we investigated whether exposure to estratetraenol affects men's social cognition abilities. In the first experiment, men performed the Interpersonal Perception task while being exposed to estratetraenol and to a control solution. Men performed the task with better accuracy while being exposed to estratetraenol. This improvement was evident especially in the Intimacy category where participants evaluated romantic relationships. In a second experiment, we exposed a different sample of men to estratetraenol and to a control solution while performing a task that implicitly measured their emotional reaction to photos depicting two humans either romantically touching or not, with a control condition of two inanimate objects either touching or not. We found that the participants' emotional reaction to touch was stronger under exposure to estratetraenol. Together, these results suggest that exposure to estratetraenol may trigger a change in men's social cognition, especially in sexually related situations.

Keywords: affective touch; chemosignaling; estratetraenol; mating behavior; sexual cognition.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Presented images. A total of 60 images were presented to the participants. Images consisted of four categories presented to the participants; two touching humans, two touching inanimate objects, two non-touching humans and two non-touching inanimate objects.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Comparison of the mean (SEM) number of correct responses obtained under exposure to EST or the control solution with respect to the task category. A significant main effect was found for compound (P = 0.024, hp2 = 0.089) with higher accuracy obtained under exposure to EST. N = 56.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Comparison of the mean (SEM) emotionality ratings obtained under exposure to EST or the control solution with respect to touch condition. A significant main effect was found for compound in trials where pictures depicted touch (P = 0.047, ηp2 = 0.061) with higher emotionality ratings obtained under exposure to EST. N = 64.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Adolphs R. (1999). Social cognition and the human brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 469–79. - PubMed
    1. Barlow D.H., Durand V.M. (2012). Abnormal Psychology: An Integrative Approach. Sixth edition, Toronto: Cengage Learning.
    1. Bensafi M., Brown W., Khan R., et al. (2004). Sniffing human sex-steroid derived compounds modulates mood, memory and autonomic nervous system function in specific behavioral contexts. Behavioural Brain Research, 152, 11–22. - PubMed
    1. Bernieri F. (2001). Toward a taxonomy of interpersonal sensitivity In: Hall J.A., Bernieri F.J., editors. Interpersonal Sensitivity: Theory and Measurement, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlboum Associates, pp. 3–20.
    1. Brown R.E., Macdonald D.W. (1985). Social Odours in Mammals, Oxford University Press.