Chapter 9 Further Reading: Scent, Sound, and the Senses

Primary Research: Olfaction and MHC

Wedekind, C., Seebeck, T., Bettens, F., & Paepke, A. J. (1995). MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 260(1359), 245–249.

The foundational sweaty t-shirt study. Essential primary source reading. Note the sample size (49 women, 44 men), the Swiss university population, and the scope of the claims the authors actually make — which is considerably narrower than popular accounts suggest. Comparing the original paper to how it is described in popular science books is itself an instructive exercise in evidence translation.

Wedekind, C., & Füri, S. (1997). Body odour preferences in men and women: Do they aim for specific MHC combinations or simply heterozygosity? Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 264(1387), 1471–1479.

A follow-up by the same team, addressing whether the preference is for outright MHC dissimilarity or for partners who carry diverse (heterozygous) MHC alleles. A nuanced distinction that gets lost in popular treatments.

Roberts, S. C., Gosling, L. M., Carter, V., & Petrie, M. (2008). MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 275(1652), 2715–2722.

A significant replication attempt focusing particularly on the oral contraceptive reversal effect. Read alongside the original Wedekind study to appreciate how the picture changed — and complicated — in subsequent testing.

The Pheromone Debate: Skeptical Perspective

Wyatt, T. D. (2015). The search for human pheromones: The lost decades and the necessity of returning to first principles. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 282(1804), 20142994.

Tristram Wyatt is one of the world's leading authorities on pheromones, and this paper is essential reading for understanding what the evidence actually shows. Wyatt's argument — that no human pheromone has been conclusively identified and that the field has been hampered by methodological shortcuts — is the mainstream scientific position, presented with characteristic rigor and clarity.

Wyatt, T. D. (2014). Pheromones and Animal Behavior: Chemical Signals and Signatures (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

For students who want to understand what pheromones actually are in contexts where they are well-established (insects, rodents), before applying that standard to the human case. The contrast between the rigor of insect pheromone research and the looseness of human pheromone claims is illuminating.

Voice and Auditory Attraction

Puts, D. A., Gaulin, S. J. C., & Verdolini, K. (2006). Dominance and the evolution of sexual dimorphism in human voice pitch. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(4), 283–296.

David Puts's foundational work on formant dispersion, vocal tract length, and perceived dominance in male voices. More nuanced than simple "low voice = attractive" claims.

Puts, D. A., Apicella, C. L., & Cárdenas, R. A. (2012). Masculine voices signal men's threat potential in forager and industrial societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 279(1728), 601–609.

Cross-cultural extension of vocal dominance research using Hadza forager samples in Tanzania. Important for evaluating the universality of voice pitch preferences.

Apicella, C. L., & Feinberg, D. R. (2009). Voice pitch alters mate-choice-relevant perception in hunter-gatherers. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 276(1659), 1077–1082.

Cross-cultural voice attractiveness research using a non-WEIRD population. Essential for students interested in the universality question.

Touch and Haptic Communication

Sorokowska, A., Sorokowski, P., Hilpert, P., Cantarero, K., Frackowiak, T., Ahmadi, K., et al. (2017). Preferred interpersonal distances: A global comparison. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 48(4), 577–592.

Large multinational survey data on personal space and touch norms. Methodologically stronger than the classic Jourard café studies and essential for understanding cross-cultural variation in haptic communication.

Morrison, I. (2016). Keep calm and cuddle on: Social touch as a stress buffer. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, 2(4), 344–362.

A readable review of the neuroscience of social touch, CT afferents, and the oxytocin connection — with appropriate attention to the limits of the oxytocin literature.

Herz, R. (2007). The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell. William Morrow.

Rachel Herz is a smell researcher and this book is among the most scientifically accurate popular treatments of olfaction and attraction. It covers the Proustian memory connection, MHC research, and the pheromone debate with appropriate nuance.

Feinberg, D. R. (2008). Are human faces and voices ornaments signaling common underlying cues to mate value? Evolutionary Anthropology, 17(2), 112–118.

A review article asking whether attractiveness signals across different modalities (face and voice) are correlated, and what this might mean for evolutionary accounts of attraction. Accessible and useful for thinking about multisensory integration.

Note on evaluating sources: When reading popular accounts of attraction research, check whether the primary study they cite is recent, well-replicated, and drawn from a diverse sample. The olfactory and pheromone literatures in particular contain a high proportion of small, unreplicated studies that received large media coverage. Use Wyatt (2015) and the case studies in this chapter as your benchmark for what "well-supported" means in this area.