subject: Stop and Smell the Body Odor [print this page] Stop and Smell the Body Odor Stop and Smell the Body Odor
Why and how scent influences a person's choice in who they date
Did you know that no two people have the exact same odor-identity or "smell fingerprint"? A person's odor-identity is determined by many factors such as, genes, skin type, diet, medicine, mood, and even the weather. Sense of smell is the least researched and studied out of all the senses, a person's sense of smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than any other sense.
When mixed with a perfume fragrance or other influencing surrounding scents, we tend to associate the smells with memories of specific people, places, or even past events. Our sense of smell is more connected with emotion than any other sense. Therefore, scent plays a role in who we are sexually attracted to. Women tend to have a better sense of smell than men, and their attraction to a man depends more on the man's fragrance than any other physical characteristic.
This all has to do with a person's MCH profile. An MCH profile or Major Histocompatibility Complex is sequences of gene systems that help the immune system identify pathogens. This affects who we choose as partners, because a person who has a different immune system than our own is more likely to produce healthy offspring.
The immune system uses body odor as an outside indicator, and the alluring scents we may pick up from people are actually just our immune system telling us who we are most biologically compatible with. However, before you go sniffing out your soul mate, keep in mind that sharing common interests, intelligence, and hobbies are factors involved in choosing a partner that will overpower our bodies natural way of selecting who we choose to spend the rest of our lives with.
