The Study Of Pheromones Essay Research Paper

Mucignat- Caretta, Carla; Caretta, Antonio & Baldini Elisabetta (V. Padova, Inst. Of Human Physiology. Padova, Italy). Protein bound male urinary pheromones: Differential responses according to age and gender. Chemical Senses 1998 (Fed). Vol. 23 (1), 67-70.

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The Study of Pheromones

The Scent of Attraction

The chemical Pheromone is an odorous chemical released by an animal that affects the behaviors of the same species. The scent is often recognizable by the opposite sex or a child and its parent. James W. Kalat author of Biological Psychology states that most of the effects of pheromones depends on the activity of the vomeronasal organ. Kalat reports that the vomeronasal organ is made up of a set of receptors located near the olfactory receptors. It has been discovered through research that adults have a vomeronasal organ (Monti-Bloch, Jennings-White, Dolberg, & Berliner, 1994). The vomeronasal organ seems to respond to chemicals found in the skin, or human pheromones. This stimulation can invoke the autonomic responses such as temperature and sweating.

Pheromones influence sexual behavior in humans during arousal, and can play a role in the timing of a woman s mensral cycle. There have been cases of college roommates who become close friends, spending a lot of time together seemed to come into their mensral cycle at the same time. This situation seems to also hold true with women who play sports on a team. Trough recent studies state that women who are intimate with men have a regular mensral period than women who are not sexually active

(Mcclintock, 1971; Weller, Weller, & Aviner, 1995). The messages sent by pheromones are different depending upon the situation. For example a pet cat will lick herself to taste your scent, if your scent is on a chair or article of clothing, your cat will claw it or curl up in it. Scent can be used as a form of communication, map, guild book, or territory (Ackerman, Diane) Scents of sexually can be packaged and sold as profit. The perfume and cologne industry is profiting from the fact that researchers for those companies have found that a scent is worth a thousand words. It s more like psychology in a vial, says biophysiologist Avery Gilbert. If you had a bottle full of fluids generated by females genital glands during copulation, and put it on a guys desk, and if he even recognized the odor he would be embarrassed.

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Until I examined the effects of pheromones by doing research on it, I had no idea that someone s scent had so much to do with who or what they are attracted to. Parents as well as children have a special scent that helps them to identify each other. Animals use their special scent to mark territory, find mates, and hunt for food, or a lost cub. In the Psychological Abstract, a study was done on the effects of male lab mice urinary pheromones. The tests were done on adult vs. Prepubertal male mice. A major urinary protein MUP was found, and was suggested to be a pheromone that binds proteins in male urine. This protein is said to repel adult males yet, attracts females. However, in prepubertal males the protein attracts males and repels females. This is because MUP binds molecules with pheromonal activity, which acts as a male signal of attraction (American Psychological Association Abstract. Chemical Senses. 1998).

I think that the smell of someone s perfume can cause one remember where, and what they were doing when they smelled the fragrance. What is in the fragrance is nothing compared to the response gotten from the wonderful smell of attraction. Most perfumes and colognes are chocked full of pheromones, which is why they work so well. A study was done three years ago by a group of scientist who worked for a company that manufactured perfumes. The test was done using patients in a dentist office. The patients were exposed to two dentist chairs sprayed with both male and female pheromones.

The patients were told to go in one at a time, male then female and have a seat. Upon entering the room the male tended to be drawn to the chair sprayed with female pheromone, and the females tended to be more drawn to the chair sprayed with male pheromone.

According to Diane Ackerman it may not be important what particular odor men are broadcasting, it s the signal of availability, the perception of self-confidence (A Natural History of The Senses). In the book A Natural History of the Senses Akerman describes what one researcher called

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visualmone while describing the deep blue eyes of a Caucasian baby, saying that maybe blue eyes were attractive to me at that time because it is attractive in the culture we live in. However in some African cultures blue eyes are considered unattractive. This leads me to think that attraction is by sight and not by scent. It seems as though people use their perception of what is or what is not attractive to determine what will attract someone else. Moreover, I think that the combination of appearance, smell, and personality of a man or woman is the true attraction principal and not the pheromone alone. I believe that pheromones can trigger responses in humans but I do not think that it (pheromones) is the sole catalysts for attraction.

There are many fragrances on the store shelves made for men and women but none have been identified as containing specific male or female pheromones (A Natural History of the Senses). I suspect that when the experiment was done on the dental patients, where the dentist chairs were sprayed with pheromones, that these were the pheromones of an animal. This is because human pheromones have not been pinpointed yet, so I believe that the male animal pheromone attracted the female subjects, and the female animal pheromones attracted the male subjects to the respective chairs.