A study says the way into our hearts is through our noses
Our sensory systems show that the nose is central to the way we form relationships, researchers say. The research analysed data on men and women aged 18 to 46 with no sense of smell and comparing it with information gleaned from a healthy control group. The results showed that men and women who were unable to smell had higher levels of social insecurity, although this manifested itself in different ways. In men, but not in women, it led to fewer relationships. The men with a faulty sense of smell averaged two partners compared with 10 for healthy men. One theory is that the lack of a sense of smell may make men less adventurous. They may have more problems assessing and communicating with other people. They may also be concerned about how they are perceived by others, and worry about their own body odour.
The
two groups of women had the same average number of sexual partners —
four. But the women who couldn’t smell well lacked confidence in their
partners — they were around 20% less secure in their relationship than
the women in the control group. Lacking a sense of smell had no impact
on their relationships with friends, suggesting that smell plays a role
for women specifically when it comes to partners.
“The sense of
smell provides social information about others,” the researchers from
the University of Dresden said. “Its absence is related with reduced
social security in men and women, and affects partnership. Men exhibit
much less explorative sexual behaviour and women are affected in a way
that they feel less secure about their partner. Our results show the
importance of the sense of smell for social behaviour,” they said.
The
role of smell as a trigger for arousal in men features widely in
fiction, from Patrick Suskind’s Perfume:
The Story of a Murderer to Al
Pacino’s lead role in Scent Of A Woman, where blind Colonel Frank Slade
can name or describe the appearance of women by their perfume alone. ANI
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