Can You Smell Status? Testosterone In Body Odor Predicts Perception Of Power

Superiority through Smell: Study Shows How BO Smell Affects Perception of Dominance

Men with higher testosterone levels produce body odors that others perceive as more dominant, according to a study that shows how people can communicate social status through scent.

Research published in Evolution and human behaviorexamined whether circulating testosterone influences how people perceive social status through smell alone. Researchers at the University of British Columbia collected worn T-shirts from 74 male volunteers, as well as saliva samples for measurement. testosterone level. 797 people then smelled the shirts and rated the wearers' characteristics, including how dominant they looked.

Men whose Testosterone measured higher produced odors that raters perceived as coming from more dominant individuals. This association persisted even after the researchers controlled for factors such as scent intensity, pleasantness, the ethnicity of the shirt wearers, and whether the raters were men or women.

The study authors noted that awareness of the social status of other people is vital for members of a social species. The ability to quickly assess whether someone is a threat or could be a valuable ally would provide evolutionary advantages all around. human history.

How testosterone changes body odor

Testosterone plays several biological roles that can alter body odor. The hormone affects the function of apocrine sweat glands, affects the production of sebum in the skin and affects the growth of body hair. Each of these represents a potential pathway through which testosterone levels may change the chemistry or intensity of natural aroma.

The study found that men with higher testosterone levels generally have more intense body odor. But the connection between testosterone and perceived dominance extended beyond odor intensity. Even when the researchers controlled for odor strength in statistical models, testosterone still predicted dominance ratings.

The effect of testosterone appears to be specific to dominance rather than to social status more broadly. The hormone showed no connection with what prestigious evaluators thought shirt-wearing people would be like. This distinction is important because people achieve high social status through two different strategies: dominancewhich relies on power and intimidation, and the prestige that comes from demonstrating valuable skills that make others want to follow willingly.

Chemical signals between species

Chemical signaling is the most common form of communication between organisms on Earth. Many vertebrates use scent to advertise competitiveness and social status. Dominant male rodents mark their territory with scent, and other males typically avoid these marked areas to avoid costly conflicts. Ring-tailed lemurs and some species of lizards can detect testosterone-related odors from other members of their species.

People can use this same ancient system. Previous research has shown that the smells of loved ones can trigger certain reactions, that people can pick up chemical signals of fear and illness, and that they judge the attractiveness of potential partners based in part on body odor. Several studies have shown that women can perceive dominance and other personality traits through male body odor, although no one has yet directly tested whether testosterone levels affect these perceptions.

The current study used both men and women as odor raters, and no difference was found between the sexes. Both men and women were equally able to detect dominance. hints of body odor.

Unanswered questions about flavor and status

The study was unable to determine whether odor-based impressions of dominance were in fact accurate. Although the researchers collected self-reported dominance ratings from the men who provided the shirts, these self-reports showed no connection to testosterone levels or how others perceived their scents. Social dominance This is about how others view and rank someone within a group, not self-perception, so this discrepancy does not necessarily mean that the odor signals were incorrect.

The researchers measured testosterone at only one point in time, providing a snapshot rather than a complete picture of baseline hormone levels. Averaging testosterone measurements across multiple occasions will likely provide more accurate estimates and potentially stronger relationships.

The shirts went through approximately 10 to 20 freeze-thaw cycles as different groups of raters sniffed them over multiple lab sessions, although this was not precisely tracked. Repeated thawing can potentially lead to bacterial activity that can change odor quality. If freeze-thaw cycles reduced odor intensity, the results might actually underestimate the true relationship between testosterone and perceived dominance.

Why dominance and not prestige?

The fact that testosterone predicted perceived dominance but prestige may not reflect the different timing of the evolution of these two paths to social status. Dominance through force is an evolutionarily ancient mechanism that humans share with many other species. Prestige appears to be unique to humans and likely arose more recently from the need to identify qualified group members and learn from them.

If dominance detection by odor conferred a survival advantage deeper into evolutionary history, natural selection would have had more time to refine this ability than to detect prestige. The biological systems that link testosterone to body odor, and the perceptual systems that allow others to interpret these signals, may have been shaped by millions of years of evolution.

The results open new questions about how people navigate social hierarchies through sensory channels they rarely recognize. From first impressions to workplace dynamicsThe subtle chemical signals that people transmit and detect can influence outcomes in ways that are worth understanding better.

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