-Rone and It's Hormonal Effects

[manchorito]

So ifI am trying to get male respect, should I wear CS rone? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[xvs]

If -rone acts as a \"spacer pheromone\" it may make other men avoid you.

On the other hand, they could be avoiding you out of respect, but I don\'t know if the research work has been done to establish any of that..

[manchorito]

I really need male respect right now, some jerk is always talking crap about me. What should I use?

[MysteriousMan]

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I really need male respect right now, some jerk is always talking crap about me. What should I use?

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

A) By repect

1) Self confidence
2) Self confidence
3) Self confidence

After you\'ve gone through 1-3, none and a little rone will help. It let you have an alpha scent.

Without self confidence, the same mones just elevate aggresivity on *both* sides and you get serious troubles.

B) By calming down

1) Use nol
2) work on your self confidence.

Nol increases social habits, make both sides feel relaxed and chatty.
So it is possible to use it before you work on your self confidence. But working on self confidence wouldn\'t hurt.

MM

[CptKipling]

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I really need male respect right now, some jerk is always talking crap about me. What should I use?

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

Learn how to talk crap back.

[MysteriousMan]

Psychology seems to be better in your case than mones.

Try \"Get anyone to do anything\" by David Lieberman or a similar book.

The titles of the chapters are typical american with words like \"anyone\" and \"anything\".
Nevertheless the chapters contain solid and practical information.



Example: The advice that was most surprising to me:

Don\'t hesitate to ask somebody for a favour (don\'t pull his leg; don\'t ask for things you could do better yourself).

If somebody does a favour to another person, the one who DOES the favour will feel more sympathy to the one he did the favour to. Not vice versa as on would assume.

So if you want somebody to like you more, ask him for a favour. But be sure this favour is not only for the favours sake.

MM

[darkness]

&lt;&lt;&lt;By the time you hit puberty, your body knows how to react to the scent of the opposite sex, and you have been conditioned to respond to particular pheromonal characteristics--depending on your experience with hair/eye color, skin tone, muscle structure, waist to hip ratio, etc. --all of which are associated with the pheromone signature.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

jkohl --

what you are saying is that we are seeking particular pheromone signatures.

what happens when physical characterstics of a particular person is unusually different then what you no0rmally associate with the physical characteristics for that type of pheromone signature .

in other words, i like many, have certain looks that i am attrate to. like eye lids that are still visible when somone\'s eyes are open. it is because of my mom. So how do people react when they have someone raising their LS levels that in previous cases would never trigger such a response because of their physiucal characteristics?

are my targets just going to react to the ls level rise,but then look at me, and be able to discount me if not physically attracted? maybe i am simplifyign the process too much....

[Sexyredhead]

I think it\'s probably something that\'s along the lines of when you find a guy sexy, and he\'s not the usual type of guy you\'re attracted to.

You know, \"He\'s not what I usually go for, but there\'s just SOMEthing about him....\"

[darkness]

how often does that happen to women? because most men don\'t where synthetic pheromones, which would seem to ilicit sucha response.

[Sexyredhead]

No, most guys don\'t wear synthetic -mones, but I know that happens to all women at least once. It\'s even happened to me. I\'ll meet a guy who is nothing like what I usually find attractive, but there will just be something about him that makes him hot, and I just can\'t put my finger on it. I don\'t know if it\'s the personality, the -mone signature, or what. But it happens.

It happens with guys too. You know, \"She\'s not even that pretty, but there\'s something about her.\" I\'ve heard this a lot of times before.

[darkness]

that comedian sandra burnhardt has a lot of guys mysteriously a\\ttacted to her.

i think it is when you like their eyes, but don\'t like their facial scructure (she\'s got a big nose and a gap between her teeth).

also, someone may have a feature reminding them of a partent or something, but you do not find the rest of them attractive. those are possibilities?

[Holmes]

Or...could it just be confidence or an ease/comfortability one has with or about himself (or herself)? Or it is something less obvious than that?

Holmes

[darkness]

probably on the female end. not on our end, unless some beahvioral trait reminds us of someone who made us comfortable during our childhood.

[Sexyredhead]

Those things are both possible. But my point was that even if you are not what someone finds attractive, if you have an attractive -mone signature (synthetic or otherwise), then that type of reaction may be what you\'ll get.

[DrSmellThis]

(A response to the above JVK post

Much is still to be done.

Scientific humility is a virtue that helps keep one \"beyond reproach\" in one\'s valuable work. Think of Winnifred Cutler\'s (of Athena \"Institute\" fame) lack of this virtue, and how it has exposed her to criticism. For the good of the public\'s understanding, interpreting the scientific data on pheromones with a traditionally scientific spirit takes a lot of restraint:

Let\'s hold our horses here! (No this isn\'t a call for well-endowed maturbators, Elana.) Current evidence suggests the probability that some of the sexual response to vision is pre-conditioned by olfactory cues early in life. We also know sniffing pherochemicals in the moment is associated with some of the change in LH; probably in a causal fashion. We do not know how much overall LH change is attributable to pheromonal cues. And we have little idea how much everyday sexual behavior is influenced by changes in LH.

And we have very little evidence indeed that addresses the rest of the sexual behavior picture.

So, for instance, to trumpet the above findings is absolutely not to say that olfaction causes the visual perception of attractiveness (a highly counterintuitive prospect which I doubt JVK believes). Only strictly controlled laboratory experiments (typically many of them, to address various alternate interpretations) can establish strong scientific evidence for sociosexual causality. No such experiment has been conducted.

Nor is it to say a significant percentage of changes in sexual behavior is caused by changes in olfactory cues. Only one study has even addressed the question of correlation (a much weaker relationship than causality)between the two changes; albeit in sort of a very preliminary and vague way (reference upon request).

More importantly, the role of cognition and non-olfactory input (e.g., vision) in the psychology mix that propels sexual behavior, even as regards hormonal changes, is just unclear at present. Nothing more; nothing less.

There is no evidence that visual cues do not cause LH levels to change. For that matter, there is no evidence that in-the-moment olfactory cues influence LH more than in-the-moment visual cues (not to mention cognition). If Mr. Kohl or anyone else wants to pay me I\'d be happy to design state of the art, professional studies that would address these questions more or less directly. None have been conducted so far, unfortunately; perhaps because cognitive-mediated pathways are much harder to trace than simple biochemical ones. But given that so much visual response is hard-wired or innate, and given that humans consistently self-report vision to be one of the strongest influences on there own choices; and given the role of visual cues in mating rituals throughout the animal kingdom; (e.g, peacocks, various dances, red monkey asses) and given the generally prominent function of color, geometry and visual-contrast in natural processes; it is highly unlikely that vision is not a very, very strong influence on human socio-sexual behavior.

Scientifically speaking, the burden of proof is not on those with the simplest, most intuitive interpretation of the available data. The burden lies with those who suggest something that appears preposterous (Trans: \"obvious\"? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]) at face value. So it is as much Mr Kohl\'s scientific responsibility as anyone else\'s to produce evidence on vision\'s role in attraction. Until evidence suggests otherwise, I\'ll default to the humble, common sense guess that vision and olfaction have a practically equal role in human sexuality, given the huge mass of self-report data (which is not impressive, but is the best data we now have for this purpose) that support both attractants. Touch (remember Harlow\'s monkeys; and KINO) and sound (gotta love those sweet voices [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]) are most probably very important in their own right.

Lastly, and with due respect, perhaps Mr. Kohl does not really believe that, \"Without the direct link from social environmental sensory input to hormones, there is simply no way that social environmental sensory input can influence our behavior.\"

This &gt;ahem&lt; curious assertion could not, of course, be interpreted literally, were it to make sense. Every social/psychological scientist worth their salt knows sensory input has overwhelmingly huge effects on general social behavior, in virtually every situation.

But even (charitably) restricting the picture to sexual behavior does not help me \"get\" the above quoted statement, which clearly presumes that hormones are the exclusive, immediate cause of changes in sexual behavior!

Unfortunately such statements do not, to say the least, help Mr. Kohl vindicate himself of those oft- heard \"exclusivity\" charges. Only a little wider, more scientifically grounded perspective on human behavior could do as much.

[darkness]

Great post Dr. You cut to the heart of the matter. Do LS rise levels influence our sexual behavior and does visual stimulation influence LS levels?

The second question is more important, for the sake of the current argument, because I think JKohl is only arguing that pheromones are the only stimuli to have shown a hormonal response.

He\'s really not arguing about behavior, and as he said, many people misinterpret his argument.

I\'m also not sure that he said visual stimuli cannot change homronal levels, just that nothing but pheromones have shown to illicit the reponse.

Great post, you brought up a lot of my thoughts, and I would recommend you contact the kinsey institute, at the school I went to, if you were to be interested in research funds. Maybe all of the broken plate fees in the dorms that they charge freshman on the first day they get there will go to use [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[CptKipling]

Primates posses the most complex visual processing system ever evolved, this is clear. They are also one of the few orders of species to \"re-evolve\" colour vision, probably due to there fruit feeding lineage (as the ripening of fruit is signaled by colour). They also developed stereoscopic vision as a result of the reduction of nasal structures, which allowed the eyes to converge at the front of the head.

As vision became more developed, it had an increasing role to play in social aspects of life. Many modern primates display swollen coloured patches of skin to signal sexual receptiveness.

However, dispite reduction of the nasal organs, the areas of the brain which process the scent signals has increased in proportion to the other areas of the brain.

[darkness]

DrSmellthis:

Have you read about people who were born with impaired olfactory systems or whatever, never show a desire to mate?

Also, they did some testing with mice, making it so their vnos/olfactory didn\'t work, and they mice never reproduced.


This would really support everything James Kohl has been saying.

[DrSmellThis]

\"This would really support everything James Kohl has been saying.\"

No it wouldn\'t, Darkness, due to a logical fallacy. Just because smell might be necessary for mating desire (I\'m not at all convinced even of this) doesn\'t mean it\'s sufficient to cause it; or that it\'s even a meaningful cause of any of it. Further, it is not the most responsible scientific language to say \"only olfaction has shown LH effects\" if in fact it has been the only sense studied.

Nice post cakemaker. Yes, with both senses (and the others) we are processor heavy and data light. Internal creatues, we are.

In light of the present discussion, perhaps Michael Jackson\'s most important achievement to date has been to reproduce without a VNO. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[jvkohl]

A series of good posts that include questions invariably leads me to address only one or two issues due to time constraints. First, visual (i.e., erotic imagery) elicits both an LH and testosterone response. Neither could occur unless they were conditioned to olfactory input. There is no pathway that allows for a link between visual input and changes in levels of hormones involved in mammalian reproductive sexual behavior. There is no mammalian model that would lead anyone to expect that the hormonal changes elicited by visual input are due to anything but olfactory conditioning. There is no known sex difference in the processing of visual input, which makes it even more difficult for anyone to show that visual input leads to a sex difference in perception. If there were no sex difference in perception, there could be no explanation of the heterosexual response cycle. And if visual input was primary in physical attraction, someone should have by now come up with a reason homosexuals prefer the same sex (I\'ve published a pheromonal explanation of homosexuality). Monell researchers recently reported that homosexuals produce different natural body odor than heterosexuals and that homosexuals prefer the odor of other homosexuals.

DrSmellThis: Please offer some biologically-based evidence that our sexual behavior is based upon visual input. I\'ve already asked many of the top behavioral development specialists to do this; no one has, they just assert visual primacy. You (and many others) still seem to believe that our reproductive sexual behavior is not as dependent upon olfactory input as the reproductive sexual behavior of other mammals. Physical attraction is a necessary part of reproductive sexual behavior, and physical attraction cannot be explained via a visual model. This would be akin to someone saying that food choice is based upon the visual appeal of the food, rather than the hormonal responses that the chemistry of the food elicits. I\'m certain you\'ve read my book and my academic papers. If you wish to challenge my model, please offer the model you believe best explains human physical attraction. I\'m surprised that you indicate I should pursue the null hypothesis: the theory that visual input is more important. Meanwhile, one question: Do you think that conscious choice is more important to sexual behavior than is unconscious affect? My NEL paper details the overwhelming importance of unconsious affect, and has, so far gone unchallenged.

[jvkohl]

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Lastly, and with due respect, perhaps Mr. Kohl does not really believe that, \"Without the direct link from social environmental sensory input to hormones, there is simply no way that social environmental sensory input can influence our behavior.\"


<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

Let me assure everyone that this belief is fully supported by evidence from many mammalian (including humans) species. To reitterate: social environmental sensory input CANNOT influence behavior unless it first directly influences hormones. No part of th pathway: gene-cell-tissue-organ-organ system can be eliminated. Social environmental sensory input must affect genes in hormone-secreting cells of tissue in an organ that is part of an organ system that affects behavior, or behavior will not change.

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This &gt;ahem&lt; curious assertion could not, of course, be interpreted literally, were it to make sense.


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Which part of this assertion does not make sense?

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Every social/psychological scientist worth their salt knows sensory input has overwhelmingly huge effects on general social behavior, in virtually every situation.


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With all due respect, when called upon to explain how sensory input exerts these huge effects on social behavior in any situation, no social/psychological scientist has ever responded with anything but \"just so\" stories (e.g., it just does). It is left to the biologists to offer factual representations of the processes involved. We are rapidly approaching an era in which even psychologists will be called upon to explain some basis for their assertions. Social scientists, after failing to do so for many years, are already a dieing breed. Lee Ellis (a social scientist with an excellent understanding of biology) has written about the death of sociology.

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Unfortunately such statements do not, to say the least, help Mr. Kohl vindicate himself of those oft- heard \"exclusivity\" charges. Only a little wider, more scientifically grounded perspective on human behavior could do as much.

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

I dissagree. Only an understanding of what I am saying is required to vindicate me. I have never claimed exclusivity: I have repeatedly claimed (and explained) \"conditioned response.\" Understanding a conditioned response beneath the level of consciousness (i.e., unconscious affect; you don\'t need to think about it) remains most difficult for those trained to think/believe that our behavior is mostly due to conscious choice rather than to hormonal changes occuring across the mammalian, including human, lifespan.

[darkness]

In light of the present discussion, perhaps Michael Jackson\'s most important achievement to date has been to reproduce without a VNO. &gt;&gt;&gt;

People who lose their vno systems still show a desire. It is those who were born without them. He had a pretty big vno in the first place, i think that\'s why he took it away [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[DrSmellThis]

(Sorry folks, for the length of this post. Note that the following frustrated language is not meant to be insulting, but to be objectively truthful, to the point; and of some LT benefit; albeit perhaps at the expense of social harmony.)

I\'ve explained all this before both publically and in private communications. I do try to respond \"dead center\" to your points; to the underlying reasoning. But Mr. Kohl, I am always impressed at how supposed professional \"intellectuals\" (but apparently not fully so in spirit) can consistently not respond at all to legitimate and crucial rational arguments. There has been no discernable evolution in your position in response to anyone\'s points, despite clear logical holes which I and others have pointed out \'till turning blue in the face, ad nauseum. Why should I try again?? What\'s in it for me? You should pay me to teach you psychology first. You just don\'t get it. The same holes are there as before. If you were m more open to learning none of your position\'s shortcomings would be a problem now. You could adjust and still have a strong, confident (yet different) position.

One reason I avoid most \"pro intellectuals\" is because I believe most of them find it in their best interest to cling to all their orginal beliefs that made them \"famous\", so they can still trumpet their earlier work and gain various dividends from this activity. (\"Oh, by the way, did I mention this paragraph yet that I have a book, won awards, and attended very prestegious conferences?\") Were they to reverse their opinions, their careers would die, or so they believe (This is absolutely wrong -- perhaps the most famous philosopher today, MacIntyre, always talks about how inadequate wrong he was before). They would feel like an impostor or whatever. They\'re insecure about something (e.g., tenure). There really is little or no respect for the pursuit of wisdom in our culture at all.

As I said above and elsewhere, all those things you said that haven\'t been shown about vision also haven\'t been shown NOT to exist. There is no reason to suppose they wouldn\'t. The research hasn\'t been done, but it could easily be. It is an open, empirical question. (Phil of science term). So it is a traditional intellectual no-no to talk the way you just did. Sloppy, sloppy. Remember phero research is still new and sparse. New, interesting studies on human sexual pheromones very rarely come out (in public).

I don\'t owe you or anyone else a review of the vision literature. You are the one getting paid. If I did review it, my position would just get more compelling. I already know what I would find (what I have said), because I am generally familiar with the findings landscape, methods and boundaries of psych research. I also have studied the brain enough to know I\'d find the links.

I saw little evidence in your papers of this olfactory conditioning. I saw you assert it is so.

I believe it would be very easy (in terms of knowing what to do) to demonstrate sex differences in visual perception, and also to trace a path wherein vision leads to change in LH. It is difficult only due to newness and exhorbitance of the necessary technology (including scores of PET or SPECT scans per subject. Do you know how much just that would cost?! How could you rationally expect that \"by now\" this research would have been done. \"That\'s right, Mr. Bush, I need 12 million dollars to study why dicks go into certain pussies and not others. We\'re mapping the whole sex-brain!\") )What is the problem?

I would very probably find both direct and indirect (mediated) links. Does the term cognitive mediation mean anything to you? I\'ve said it many times as a partial vision theory, but you claim (with ZERO grounds) there could never be a theory about it. You ignore all behavioral observations and subject self report on visual sexuality, even thought these are the strongest existing data on it. There is no evidence because you look for none except your own pet evidence. The most important, central event to be observed is the subjectivity of the person who is attracted. That subjectivity IS the attraction, after all! What is the only fairly direct way we can know about that subjectivity? Self-report data.

You are mistaken about what psychologists believe about conscious choice. I am one of the few \"academically inclined\" psychologists that even cares about it. And biologists should not find it hard to believe cognition to be more important for humans than for the common drosophila milanogaster.

For the last time, I did not assert (and never have asserted... and have said this repeatedly to you) \"primacy of vision\"! Most psychologists wouldn\'t either.

Social science does not mean sociology at all! Check any dictionary under \"social science.\" Be careful before you speak about other people\'s fields. You don\'t know what social science is (any science having to do with groups of people or persons in relationship; e.g., economics, psych, anthropology.), so can\'t know of its \"impending death\". You are (by your own admission, once) not very familiar with psychology at all -- for instance Freud (I just read your post in the other thread, which is full of anti-Freud hubris: about something that has nothing to do with Freud!), behaviorism, cognitive science, research methodology, statistics, clinical psych and philosophy of science. You don\'t feel obligated to respect any of these fields (e.g., \"social science is dead\" -- on which planet?? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ) Your hubris (not that I don\'t also have hubris)carries an element of disrespect for all the work done in these areas and others, yet your criticisms of that work miss the entire ballpark. If you don\'t know about it, why diss it? People will get mad unnecessarily. I cannot believe psychologists would let you get away with some of the things you say without screaming at you. There must not be any good ones in your circle.

OK, here\'s the theory you asked for: (I have sufficiently arranged for legal copyrights.)

I am confident (but not sure, of course) this theory is consistent with all the research you cite in all of your publications; and other research. I could easily design studies to \"test\" it.

Human attraction is relatively well viewed as a narrative or story informed by information from multiple physical, sexual, emotional, social, perceptual, sensuous, intellectual and cultural sources, both conscious and unconscious. The way these elements fit together is visible both physiologically and in the person\'s attraction story(stories). Choice and external determinism codetermine attraction, as one literally does not make sense without the other. (One cannot, therefore, be more important.) There is no simple absolute cause of attraction, but rather there is a woven narrative expressing a web of causes. No attraction is what it is without having been mediated or processed in the attraction story at some time. What are the charcteristics of the attraction story? That is an empirical question (i.e., for research to answer)

Early childhood olfaction alone cannot be a sufficient cause, for example, as other necessary elements of the attraction story are not there yet (e.g, neural structures). There is no way for your conditioning to happen in any literal sense, as sexual attraction is not there yet to be paired with anything). By the time a child is old enough and before, other causal influences enter, and are \"confounded\"(research methods term)with olfaction if one tries (in vain) to isolate it. The visual model embedded in this big picture would be small but important as are the other senses, including olfaction. There are two pathways to hormones from vision -- direct and cognitively mediated. They are not mutually exclusive. If I see a wild lion I get a hormonal surge with very little, but not NO cognitive mediation, for example. Effects like this are ridiculously easy to show in the lab. Same goes with olfaction. Your model ignores the conscious portion of olfaction as it affects attraction. For instance, something recognized as smelling sexy would attract better than that same thing if it took only unconscious biochem. pathways and was unrecognized as sexy. (This is why forum members report it works best to let some phero smell bleed through the cover scent, and also why cover scents work well in the first place).

My theory holds a place for literally every phenomenon we talk about having to do with sexuality and attraction. Ther are many sub-parts. Yours is pre-limited to a few reptilian processes that influence some other (of the millions of other) causes, just as they are themselves influenced by other causes. Remember there is a narrative context within which every pheromone reaction becomes actual attraction, as the new research on A1 already hints at. And some time ago here I detailed a thought experiment in which olfaction can be conditioned by other senses in attraction. But it\'s not even about senses.

Your paper actually details little about any \"overwhelming importance\" of unconscious processes, because it fairly compares UP to nothing else it could be overwhelming. What is \"unchallenged?\"

And now, off to bed.

[xvs]

JVK,

How do you account for sexual preferences such as:

- some guys like women with big breasts
- some like women with big butts
- some like women who are skinny
- some like women who are fatter
- some like women with blonde hair
- some like women with dark hair
- some won\'t date any woman with short hair

etc.

Do you claim that all such preferences are pheromonally based, or is there a visual component?

[darkness]

he\'s gone through this. here is some of his argument from a previous post on the thread:

&lt;&lt;&lt;Conditioning of the visual response cycle to olfactory input (pheromones) occurs throughout a lifetime: beginning at birth. You _think_ you are attracted by physical appearance because your hormone response to pheromones occurs subconsciously. By the time you hit puberty, your body knows how to react to the scent of the opposite sex, and you have been conditioned to respond to particular pheromonal characteristics--depending on your experience with hair/eye color, skin tone, muscle structure, waist to hip ratio, etc. --all of which are associated with the pheromone signature.&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

[DrSmellThis]

Darkness, that is a good example of just saying something is so without providing or referencing evidence. It is telling one story about the way things could have happened. It is a theory; an educated guess. It has not been tested against other plausible theories.

Of course, I\'m familiar. That is what I was calling into question in the first place.

[CptKipling]

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- some won\'t date any woman with short hair

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I\'m one of these men, and I think (from my experiences) that it in fact could be that short hair doesnt trap the same amount of pheros.

[jvkohl]

DrSmellthis refuses to respond to a biologically based presentation of facts. Instead, he protests while refusing to acknowledge any support for key aspects of my position. Olfactory conditioning (for example): odor-conditioning of hunger in response to visual input (the sight of fractal-based computer images.) http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994083

Classical conditioning is commonly known, accepted, and has been used to explain the human sexual response to visual input, as exemplified in the conditioning of male sexual arousal to the site of a penny in a jar.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uid s=10224951&amp;dopt=Abstract

The human response parallels what is exemplified in mammalian studies of olfactory conditioning of the sexual response cycle.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uid s=12654349&amp;dopt=Abstract

DrSmellThis chooses to toss out what is known and offer what is referred to as the \"null hypothesis\" (which attempts to draw attention away from what is known, while focussing on what is not known.)

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… all those things you said that haven\'t been shown about vision also haven\'t been shown NOT to exist.

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Others may comprehend the fallacy of attempting to show something exists merely because no one has shown that it doesn\'t exist. DrSmellThis continues with the assumption that visual input is central to physical attraction because no one has shown that it isn\'t.

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The research hasn\'t been done, but it could easily be.

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No funding will ever be available for research on any null hypothesis. Rather than caution me about intelectual no-no\'s, DrSmellThis should examine the literature.

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New, interesting studies on human sexual pheromones very rarely come out (in public),

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(recent studies included):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uid s=12606409&amp;dopt=Abstract

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I don\'t owe you or anyone else a review of the vision literature.

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You owe it to yourself, lest you continue to make irrelevant statements. Comparatively speaking, there is no support for any visual perspective on the development of sexual behavior.

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I saw little evidence in your papers of this olfactory conditioning. I saw you assert it is so.

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You must have missed the ever-present bibliographies included in my writings. These bibliographies are a large part of publication in peer-reviewed journals. If there is no supporting evidence, you don\'t get published.

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I believe it would be very easy (in terms of knowing what to do) to demonstrate sex differences in visual perception, and also to trace a path wherein vision leads to change in LH.

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What model is it that allows this belief? There is no data from any mammalian studies that indicates a sex difference in visual perception, and no data that supports a pathway from visual input to a change in LH.

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Does the term cognitive mediation mean anything to you?

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No, in the context of olfactory/pheromonal conditioning, it plays no role: the LH response occurs without thought.

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I\'ve said it many times as a partial vision theory, but you claim (with ZERO grounds) there could never be a theory about it.

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I\'ve said there cannot be a biologically based theory about it. As always, the key issue to me is biology, rather than just a theory--anyone can come up with a theory.

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The most important, central event to be observed is the subjectivity of the person who is attracted. That subjectivity IS the attraction, after all! What is the only fairly direct way we can know about that subjectivity? Self-report data.

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

Subjective evidence is not a consideration in biological (i.e., factual) explanations, which require an objective approach. Biology starts with facts that have been obtained through objective study. You start with what someone says, or what a group of people say. The difference is that LH can be objectively measured; people don\'t self-report the change.

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…biologists should not find it hard to believe cognition to be more important for humans than for the common drosophila milanogaster.

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I\'ve never said cognition is not important for humans, though it is of no importance to the conditioned response.

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I did not assert (and never have asserted... and have said this repeatedly to you) \"primacy of vision

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I continue to get the impression that you think visual input (and cognitive mediation) is more important to physical attraction than is olfactory input, which indicates to me that you think visual input is primary. The disparity is confusing, and prevents point by point comparison. Clearly, in mammals, olfaction is primary; I\'m not sure how much affect/effect you attribute to visual input in humans (we are mammals).

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Social science does not mean sociology at all! Check any dictionary under \"social science.

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I conveyed my meaning. Those who lack a biological perspective continue to lose ground in explanatory power. Can\'t find a citation for the work by Lee Ellis; who conveyed my thoughts on this very well. He also organized two conferences on the biological basis of behavior. I\'m not the only one who thinks that social science is dying. The upsurge in publications on biological psychology is a fairly clear indication.

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People will get mad unnecessarily. I cannot believe psychologists would let you get away with some of the things you say without screaming at you. There must not be any good ones in your circle.

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I told about 200 conference attendees in a presentation to the Human Behavior and Evolution Society that there was no non olfactory biological basis for visually perceived physical attraction. No screaming, but definitely some anger. Still, no one offered any non-olfactory biological basis for visually perceived physical attraction.

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OK, here\'s the theory you asked for: (I have sufficiently arranged for legal copyrights.)

I am confident (but not sure, of course) this theory is consistent with all the research you cite in all of your publications; and other research. I could easily design studies to \"test\" it.

Human attraction is relatively well viewed as a narrative or story informed by information from multiple physical, sexual, emotional, social, perceptual, sensuous, intellectual and cultural sources, both conscious and unconscious. The way these elements fit together is visible both physiologically and in the person\'s attraction story(stories). Choice and external determinism codetermine attraction, as one literally does not make sense without the other. (One cannot, therefore, be more important.) There is no simple absolute cause of attraction, but rather there is a woven narrative expressing a web of causes. No attraction is what it is without having been mediated or processed in the attraction story at some time. What are the charcteristics of the attraction story? That is an empirical question (i.e., for research to answer)

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That\'s not a theory; you simply say that you don\'t know what attraction is; allude to conscious processing, while incorporating your lack of knowledge into some mystic phenomenon that correlates with what someone tells you is their reason for being attracted to someone else.

In contrast, research has shown that the characteristics of mammalian physical attraction are overwhelmingly olfactory characteristics, and other mammals don\'t need anything else added to the story.

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Early childhood olfaction alone cannot be a sufficient cause, for example, as other necessary elements of the attraction story are not there yet (e.g, neural structures). There is no way for your conditioning to happen in any literal sense, as sexual attraction is not there yet to be paired with anything).

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You make obvious the fact that you lack any understanding of pre- and postnatal sexual differentiation. The neural structures are present before birth and affected by pheromones beginning at birth. The conditioned response is present long before any of us are consciously aware of sexual attraction. (I can\'t help but wonder if you think sexual attraction begins with puberty, since you say it\'s not there yet… not there when?)

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By the time a child is old enough and before, other causal influences enter, and are \"confounded\"(research methods term)with olfaction if one tries (in vain) to isolate it.

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These confounds seem to be throwing you off course. The influence of olfaction is predicted by the sum total of genetically determined sexual development, and manifest as a hormone response to pheromones, immediately: AT BIRTH. The hormone response has been shown to occur in all mammals studied, and has repeatedly been used as an explanation of post-natal sexual differentiation.

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The visual model embedded in this big picture would be small but important as are the other senses, including olfaction. There are two pathways to hormones from vision -- direct and cognitively mediated.

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There is no direct pathway from vision to the hormonal changes that govern reproductive sexual behavior, and I don\'t know of any pathway that has been detailed directly linking vision to other hormonal changes. This would require showing gene activation in hormone secreting nerve cells, as occurs in GnRH nerve cells in response to olfactory/pheromonal input. I have no idea what you are talking about when you mention a cognitively mediated pathway. Sounds as if you believe that our thought processes somehow induce hormonal change.

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They are not mutually exclusive. If I see a wild lion I get a hormonal surge with very little, but not NO cognitive mediation, for example.

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A hormonal response to a lion has nothing to do with the sexual response cycle unless mating is involved. Lions don\'t need cognition to mate; and we don\'t need cognition to know that attempting to mate with a lion is not a good idea. There\'s good reason that pheromones are usually species-specific. It certainly wouldn\'t do if we were sexually attracted to another species--though this paraphillia does occur.

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Effects like this are ridiculously easy to show in the lab. Same goes with olfaction. Your model ignores the conscious portion of olfaction as it affects attraction. For instance, something recognized as smelling sexy would attract better than that same thing if it took only unconscious biochem. pathways and was unrecognized as sexy. (This is why forum members report it works best to let some phero smell bleed through the cover scent, and also why cover scents work well in the first place).

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\"The conscious portion of olfaction\" ??? My model is based upon mammalian biology in which there is no conscious portion of olfaction. Other mammals do not consciously seek out the right odors, they respond hormonally and behave accordingly.

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My theory holds a place for literally every phenomenon we talk about having to do with sexuality and attraction. Ther are many sub-parts. Yours is pre-limited to a few reptilian processes that influence some other (of the millions of other) causes, just as they are themselves influenced by other causes. Remember there is a narrative context within which every pheromone reaction becomes actual attraction, as the new research on A1 already hints at. And some time ago here I detailed a thought experiment in which olfaction can be conditioned by other senses in attraction. But it\'s not even about senses.

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\"A narrative context\" ???? No cognition, no narrative in my model. What model are you using to predict this narrative context, which appears to me to only include human physical attraction?

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Your paper actually details little about any \"overwhelming importance\" of unconscious processes, because it fairly compares UP to nothing else it could be overwhelming. What is \"unchallenged?

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The entire conceptualization is unchallenged from any biological perspective. The details on unconscious processing are self evident (and also available through minimal reading of articles cited in the bibliography). Unconscious processing is believed to be far more important to behavior than our conscious thoughts. Makes sense, doesn\'t it. You can control conscious thought/action, the hormone to behavior connection is automatic. If the hormone to behavior connection were not automatic, there would be no conditioning, and no mammalian model. There wouldn\'t be any other mammals at all, since other mammals don\'t think much about mating; they just follow their nose.

[jvkohl]

Every sex difference that is either hormonally mediated (fat distribution; breast size) or culturally mediated (long hair) is accompanied by a pheromonal component. Testosterone and estrogen make the largest contribution to sex differences and the pheromones associated with these typically male/female hormones condition your hormone response. If, for example, conditioning has, from birth, led you to prefer large breasted women, a traumatic experience with a large breasted woman could recondition your hormone response--you might even begin to fear a sexual encounter with a large breasted woman. Similarly, a woman who is traumatized by rape will tend to \"freeze\" with any man--even her loving spouse, because a single trauma of great magnitude can influence everything that follows.

The epilogue of my book details such connections.

[jvkohl]

Thanks Darkness; unfortunately DrSmellThis is not grasping most of what I\'m writing.

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he\'s gone through this. here is some of his argument from a previous post on the thread:

&lt;&lt;&lt;Conditioning of the visual response cycle to olfactory input (pheromones) occurs throughout a lifetime: beginning at birth. You _think_ you are attracted by physical appearance because your hormone response to pheromones occurs subconsciously. By the time you hit puberty, your body knows how to react to the scent of the opposite sex, and you have been conditioned to respond to particular pheromonal characteristics--depending on your experience with hair/eye color, skin tone, muscle structure, waist to hip ratio, etc. --all of which are associated with the pheromone signature.&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;


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