Smell ya later!
According to a study published in the Frontiers in Psychology medical journal, if you’ve had difficulty dating, it could be because single guys stink – literally — and women can detect married men among the bachelors.
Researchers from Australia’s Macquarie University demonstrated that solitary males emit a stronger odor than their coupled counterparts.
“From an evolutionary standpoint, it may be advantageous for women to detect the chemosignals that denote coupledom and ultimately avoid pursuing partnered males (particularly those with offspring) due to the relatively diminished resources they can offer,” the study’s authors concluded.
Pheromones, the fragrances we generate as a result of our hormones, play a significant role in the evolution of partnership and attraction. Earlier this year, single women opted to “vab” instead of saturating themselves in perfume before hitting the town, believing that the aroma of their vaginal secretions would attract potential partners.
Women have criticized birth control drugs for altering the way they view their spouses. Elisha Covey, a podcaster, has previously asserted that discontinuing birth control altered the way she viewed and smelled her husband, and she is now certain that the commonly prescribed pill is ruining your dating life.
As for the stink of singles, 82 heterosexual women were invited to sniff the t-shirt sweat of 91 different men, including 45 cuffed men and 46 singles.
They provided the participants with clean, white t-shirts and requested them to wear them for 24 hours to achieve maximal perspiration in the armpits, where “a large volume of sweat” is absorbed.
After collecting the odorous clothing, the female participants scented sex-specific shirts and were given images of the men corresponding to those shirts.
“Consistent with our prediction, solitary men were judged as having a stronger body odor than paired males,” the authors of the study noted. We also discovered that unmarried men’s faces were assessed as more manly than those of married men, but only by married women.
Other research have shown that lonesome singles have higher testosterone levels than their partnered counterparts; however, this study did not include testosterone testing for the single and coupled guys.
Study author Mehmet Mahmut told Newsweek that the hormones play a part in “mate-seeking behavior.” The scientists were unable to pinpoint precisely why the differences in odors were there.
“Previous research has shown that a higher testosterone level is associated with a stronger body odor,” he stated. Potentially single males have higher testosterone levels.
»Single males stink more than married ones, study finds«