The rules of sexual attraction

Have you ever wondered why you’re so attracted to that person in your class that you’ve never even spoken to?

Sure, a lot of it might have to do with the fact that they’re smokin’ hot — but is there something else going on?

We’ve all heard of pheromones and their role in providing subconscious clues about attraction. Pheromones were initially discovered in 1956 as a powerful sex attractant in female moths. Since then, pheromones have been found to play a similar role in mating initiation in lower mammals, such as hamsters.

With humans, of course, it is more complicated. After being sniffed, the pheromones travel into the nose and through a specially designed pathway to reach the limbic system of the brain, where they can then be processed.

Scientific evidence has emerged showing that humans now lack what is thought to be an integral organ in this process — the vomeronasal organ.

Many scientists believe that lacking this organ makes it impossible for pheromones to have any effect, while others maintain that pheromones can still affect us by being processed directly in the nasal canal, regardless of the absence of the vomeronasal organ.

Another important factor in attraction is sweat.

Research in the Journal of Neuroscience showed that a woman can subconsciously tell if a man is attracted to her by the scent of his sweat.

Sweat can also give clues about how healthy a person is. An article published this past February in the New York Daily News said that the way a person’s body odor smells gives clues about the makeup of their immune system. It also said that people are generally attracted to mates with a different type of immune system than their own.

The suggested reasoning for this phenomenon is that the more diverse a person’s immune system is, the stronger their antibodies are and the more resistant they are to diseases. Combining two very different immune systems would result in healthier offspring.

So where do gay men and lesbian women fit into all of this?

In 2006, a Swedish research team found that lesbian women process and respond to suspected pheromones differently than heterosexual women. A similar study done on gay men was referenced in a 2005 New York Times article.

The study showed that gay men respond to suspected pheromones completely differently than heterosexual men. (Assuming, of course, that the pheromones could still be processed, regardless of the absence of the vomeronasal organ.)

So it seems our sexual attraction may indeed be governed by chemical responses.

Of course, sheer attraction is just one of the factors that go into the making of a relationship (especially if the goal is for the relationship to last more than one night).

But maybe the next time you see that hottie in your class, you can try out a pick up line like, “Nice antibodies.”

Sarah Dugan a columnist for The Daily Tar Heel. She is a Senior environmental health science major from Asheville. Contact her at sdugan@email.Unc.Edu