Pheromones will NOT get you laid!

[jvkohl]

... part of the

unconscious mind already makes pretty firm conclusions about other people long before this reaches conscious

awareness .... the process of evaluation actually happens in thousandths of a second

From Kohl et al. (2001)
The ‘affective primacy hypothesis’ [5] asserts that positive and

negative affective reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input and virtually no cognitive processing.

Olfactory signals seem to induce emotional reactions whether or not a chemical stimulus is consciously perceived. We

theorize that the importance of human non-verbal signals is based upon information processing, which occurs in the

limbic system, and without any cognitive (cortical) assessment. Affect thus does not require conscious

interpretation of signal content. Underlying this fact is that affect dominates social interaction and it is the

major currency in social interactions [6]. Affective reactions can occur without extensive perceptual and cognitive

encoding. They are made with greater confi dence than cognitive judgments, and can be made sooner [5, 7]. Olfactory

input from the social environment is well adapted to fit such assertions. For example, chemical cues allow humans to

select for, and to mate for, traits of reproductive fitness that cannot be assessed simply from visual

cues.

.... so what Gladwell is saying is that your body, facial muscles, posture, voice

tone, everything is sending out signals that everyone else is unconsciously picking up on.... pheromones might

actually be altering your own microbehaviors

My compliments to Gladwell, whose views

are more clearly stated and more readily understood than mine. Here's a link to a recent report on these "snap

judgements" that also mentions Gladwell's

book.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/a...ion=topstories



With this recent report in mind, please consider that a sex difference in the signal, and in its processing are

required to get to sex difference in behavior. Following this biological logic, the only way to get to sex

differences is through olfactory /pheromonal conditioning of the visual response that allows us to make "snap

judgements." The article linked above mentions functional MRI, which has been used to show sex differences in the

response to pheromones, and sexual orientation differences in the response to

pheromones.

One of the researchers documented in Blink filmed thousands of couples and

studied their fleeting microexpressions, and just from the analysis of tiny facial tics they could accurately

predict how long the relationship would last... I was so floored by this book I had to read it twice... it was like

the missing piece of information between the Mystery Method approach, pheromones, and everything

else....

Have you read "The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality."

?

JVK

[Holmes]

[QUOTE=jvkohl]http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/a...ion=topstories[/QUOT

E]

Good stuff, huh?

Some Gladwell clips for those

interested:

Charlie Rose

Feb. '05 (Gladwell comes on a little over halfway

through)

SxSW

'05