Chapter 9 Exercises: Scent, Sound, and the Senses

Exercise 9.1 — Hypothetically Yours: Designing a T-Shirt Study

Type: Research design activity | Individual or small group | Time: 40–60 minutes

Claus Wedekind's 1995 sweaty t-shirt study is one of the most discussed pieces of research in the popular science of attraction. In this exercise, you will design a hypothetical classroom-level replication — and grapple with the real-world obstacles that stand between a good idea and a valid study.

Part A: The Design Challenge

Working individually or in groups of two to three, sketch a study design that attempts to test the MHC hypothesis in a college population. Your design should address the following questions:

1. Participants: Who are your participants? How would you recruit them? What information would you need to collect about them? (Consider: MHC typing, menstrual cycle phase and contraceptive use for participants who menstruate, dietary restrictions during the protocol, health status.)

2. Protocol: How long would participants wear the t-shirt? What would they be told — and not told? What behaviors would you prohibit during the wearing period (scented soaps, certain foods, exercise, cologne/perfume)? How would you store and present the odors?

3. Rating task: How would you ask participants to evaluate the odors? What dimensions would you use? Pleasantness? Sexiness? "Would date"? How would you handle participants who find the task aversive?

4. MHC typing: In the original Wedekind study, MHC typing required blood samples. What are the practical and ethical implications of this requirement? Are there less invasive alternatives?

Part B: The IRB Gauntlet

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) exist to protect research participants from harm and coercion. Imagine your design has gone to an IRB committee. What questions or objections might the board raise?

Consider: - Consent issues: Participants in the rating task are exposed to body odors from other participants. What must they be told? What right to withdraw must they have? - Deception: If participants know the study is about attraction, will their ratings be influenced by demand characteristics? How does this affect consent procedures? - Biological sample collection: Even saliva or cheek swabs (used for some contemporary MHC-typing approaches) require explicit consent and create biological data that must be stored and protected. - Potential harm: Are there any populations for whom participation could be harmful or distressing?

Write a one-paragraph "IRB concern summary" identifying the three most significant ethical challenges your design would need to address.

Part C: Reflection

After completing Parts A and B, write a short reflection (150–200 words) on the following question: Why is it so difficult to study olfactory attraction rigorously, and what does this difficulty tell us about the limits of what we can know from published studies?

Exercise 9.2 — Voice Rating Activity: What Are You Actually Hearing?

Type: Listening and debrief activity | Full class | Time: 30–45 minutes

This exercise works best when your instructor prepares a short playlist of audio clips (5–8 seconds each) of different speakers reading the same neutral sentence. Instructors can source clips from publicly available voice databases (e.g., the VOICE database, or clips from freely licensed audiobook recordings).

Part A: The Rating Task

Listen to each clip. For each voice, rate the following dimensions on a 1–7 scale (1 = very low, 7 = very high):

Rate without discussion — first impressions only.

Part B: Class Data Discussion

Once ratings are compiled (your instructor may do a quick show-of-hands or aggregate on the board), discuss:

1. Was there consensus on any clip — did most raters agree on attractiveness or confidence? Where was disagreement highest?
2. Did the attractiveness ratings correlate with the confidence ratings? With the intelligence ratings? What does this suggest about the halo effect in voice perception?
3. Did you notice any voice characteristics that seemed to drive your ratings? Pitch? Pace? Accent? Clarity?

Part C: Debrief Questions

Answer the following individually, then discuss as a class:

1. Were any of your ratings influenced by accent or speech pattern? How might the sociolinguistic history of an accent (its association with class, region, or ethnicity) affect what you experienced as "attractiveness" versus voice quality?

2. The clips contained no visual information. In a real encounter, voice and face are perceived simultaneously. How might your ratings have changed if you had seen the speaker? What does this suggest about multisensory integration?

3. Chapter 9 notes that voice changes have been reported across the menstrual cycle for people who menstruate. Could you design a listening study to test whether male raters detect these differences? What would your control condition be?

Exercise 9.3 — Cross-Cultural Touch Norms Mapping

Type: Collaborative mapping activity | Small groups (3–4 students) | Time: 30–40 minutes

Research on cross-cultural variation in touch norms (Sorokowska et al., 2017; the earlier Jourard café study) finds large differences across countries in who touches whom, where, how often, and in what contexts.

Part A: Personal Touch Norms Inventory

Answer the following questions individually before discussing with your group:

1. Think of a casual acquaintance — someone you know by name but are not close to. In a typical greeting, is it normal in your cultural context to shake hands? Hug? Kiss on the cheek (and if so, how many times)? Wave without contact?

2. Who in your life is "allowed" to touch you on the shoulder in conversation? On the arm? Who would feel intrusive doing so? Does this differ by the gender of the toucher or the touched?

3. Have you ever experienced a touch that felt intrusive or unwelcome in a social (non-sexual) context? What made it cross a line?

Part B: Group Mapping

In your small group, share your individual answers. You likely have different cultural backgrounds, family norms, or regional upbringings. Using a simple body outline (your instructor may provide a template, or you can sketch one), map:

• Areas where a casual acquaintance can touch you (in your cultural context) without it feeling intrusive
• Areas that would require a closer relationship
• Areas that are off-limits in non-intimate contexts

Do group members agree? Where are the differences? What seems to drive them — culture of origin, gender socialization, family norms, individual history?

Part C: Attraction Implications

Discuss with your group:

1. If touch norms vary this much, what challenges does this create when two people from different touch-norm backgrounds are attracted to each other? How might a touch that signals interest in one person's cultural grammar be read as intrusive or, conversely, as coldly distant, by someone from a different background?

2. Chapter 9 discusses the CT afferent pathway — a dedicated neural system for gentle, social touch. If this pathway is biological, why do the behaviors that activate it vary so much across cultures?

3. How do you think apps, text-based communication, and video calling — where touch is absent — change the role of haptic communication in early attraction? Are there substitutes for touch in digital courtship?

Note to instructors: Exercise 9.1 works well as a written assignment; Exercises 9.2 and 9.3 are designed for active class engagement. The voice rating activity requires minimal preparation — any diverse set of voice clips reading the same sentence will work. The cross-cultural touch mapping activity may surface sensitive personal histories; create space for students to opt out of sharing and emphasize that the goal is analysis, not disclosure.