ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2018
The scent of attractiveness: levels of reproductive hormones explain individual differences in women's body odour.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- From female to female: Communication via chemosignals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Menstrual Cycle Matters in Host Attractiveness to Mosquitoes and Topical Repellent Protection.Insects · 2025Article
- A standardized lexicon of body odor words crafted from 17 countries.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Mate assessment based on physical characteristics: a review and reflection.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Combined perceptual and chemical analyses show no compelling evidence for ovulatory cycle shifts in women's axillary odour.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- International consensus statement on allergy and rhinology: Olfaction.International forum of allergy & rhinology · 2022Review
- Does scent attractiveness reveal women's ovulatory timing? Evidence from signal detection analyses and endocrine predictors of odour attractiveness.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The Effects of Pitch Manipulation on Male Ratings of Female Speakers and Their Voices.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Facial threat affects trust more strongly than facial attractiveness in women than it does in men.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Perception of smell of a perfume applied to the women skin in course of menstrual cycle.Journal of cosmetic dermatology · 2021Article
- Body Odours Sampled at Different Body Sites in Infants and Mothers-A Comparison of Olfactory Perception.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Human olfactory dysfunction: causes and consequences.Cell and tissue research · 2021Review
- Body odours as a chemosignal in the mother-child relationship: new insights based on an human leucocyte antigen-genotyped family cohort.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Children's Body Odors: Hints to the Development Status.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Subjective Evaluation of the Results of Injectable Hyaluronic Acid Fillers for the Face.Clinical interventions in aging · 2020Article
- The scent of attractiveness: levels of reproductive hormones explain individual differences in women's body odour.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Sexual Desire of Women With Fast and Slow Life History Throughout the Ovulatory Cycle.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behaviorArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Individuals are thought to have their own distinctive body odour which reportedly plays an important role in mate choice. In the present study we investigated individual differences in body odours of women and examined whether some women generally smell more attractive than others or whether odour preferences are a matter of individual taste. We then explored whether levels of reproductive hormones explain women's body odour attractiveness, to test the idea that body odour attractiveness may act as a chemosensory marker of reproductive fitness. Fifty-seven men rated body odours of 28 healthy, naturally cycling women of reproductive age. We collected all odours at peak fertility to control for menstrual cycle effects on body odour attractiveness. Women's salivary oestradiol, progesterone, testosterone and cortisol levels were assessed at the time of odour collection to test whether hormone levels explain body odour attractiveness. We found that the men highly agreed on how attractive they found women's body odours. Interestingly, women's body odour attractiveness was predicted by their oestradiol and progesterone levels: the higher a woman's levels of oestradiol and the lower her levels of progesterone, the more attractive her body odour was rated. In showing that women's body odour attractiveness is explained by levels of female reproductive hormones, but not by levels of cortisol or testosterone, we provide evidence that body odour acts as a valid cue to potential fertility.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.