Something I haven’t seen mentioned here is the fact that sweat acts as a lubricant between the skin of your torso and upper-inner arm preventing chapping with increased skin-on-skin contact movement.
Yes, the sweat keeps you cool and the smell attracts others with different immune system.
Can you develop the part where the smell attracts people?
I want to ask for help to deal with the cognitive dissonance I am experiencing. This information is proof that I (if this study applies to me) will discriminate people based on something they cannot control… which is wrong, correct?
There’s nothing wrong with having preferences. Discrimination gets a bad rap because of it’s association with racism, homophobia, etc, but everybody discriminates all the time, every day, typically about incredibly simple stuff. At the end of the day, it’s just recognizing differences in people and making decisions based on those differences. Yeah, you shouldn’t let something like race or gender impact a decision to hire someone, but you’re already discriminating against one gender when selecting romantic partners. (unless you’re bisexual and have exactly a 50/50 preference) If you’re only attracted to people with athletic builds, you’ll be discriminating against tons of people with health conditions. If you’re looking for a goth partner, you’re discriminating against all the people with happy families. I don’t really think discriminating over pheremones is any different.
I understand your point (I think I do) rationally. The difference is that I feel that any discrimination (figure, style, voice) is wrong… which is extreme, correct? I wasn’t very anxious about those because they felt controllable, and now I learn there is a different trait which I might not be conscious of, affecting my behaviour. That (belief) causes anxiety.
Yes, I’d say that’s a pretty extreme view. I’m also not sure what you mean by controllable? I’d argue most of the uniqueness of humans comes as a product of the environment they were raised in, which isn’t really something we have control over.
Also I have real bad news if you’re worried about things you’re not conscious of affecting your behaviors.
I assume you are talking about subconscious fears?
Oh and how great it is to be able to learn
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-024-00418-y
The relative importance of attractivenesss and intelligence to the mate prefernces and choices of women and their parents.
The abstract is viewable for free. Both parents and daughters prefer the attractive mate.
Supposedly the smell was something prehistoric people would flaunt. Mating in a lot of species is odor-based, and at one time, we were no exception. They did an experiment in an episode of a science program called Brink where they made a pheromone system that could be used to detect how related you were to a potential mate and found it successful. For us, they say, it just happens to gather in our armpits.
Whatever prehistoric people thought, nowadays we seem to dislike body odor and tend to favor filling the room with a mist of Old Spice.
