Have you ever noticed how scents can affect your mood? Some people use lavender when they want to relax, and others wake up to a smile when they smell coffee in the morning. When you walk into a pizza restaurant and smell melting cheese and baking bread, do you get excited and feel even more hungry? Your nose is quite a powerful sensory tool, so what if you could put it to use when it comes to romance?
New studies have recently shown that your scent is one of the most important things that are remembered when someone is attracted to you. Interestingly, a survey conducted among hundreds of college students showed that girls consistently rank “how a guy smells” as the most important feature when determining whether or not she is attracted to him, while guys ranked “physical appearance” as the most important.
Obviously, not smelling bad is important in any social situation. To make yourself attractive to women, smelling good is even more important. Women are more influenced by their senses of smell than men are, especially when it comes to love. Another study about the link between scent and physical attraction was conducting at Oxford University, where women were asked to rate the attractiveness of men based on their head shots while they were exposed to pleasant or unpleasant scents that did not necessarily coordinate to the way the man in the picture actually smelled. Women rated male faces as less attractive when their photos were accompanied with an unpleasant smell and as more attractive when accompanied by a pleasant scent.
Why does this inherently make sense? Humans tend to have more positive experiences when they are in the presence of something that smells good. Most of the time, I don’t feel like eating until I smell something good coming from a restaurant I walk past. Then I realize I’m starving. Numerous businesses like casinos in Las Vegas and stores in malls have a fragrance they allow to sit around, because if you like the way a place smells, you are more likely to stay and have a more positive experience than if the place smelled bad. This idea applies to people as well. You are more likely to be attracted to someone who smells good.
You have probably experienced firsthand the way that smells can bring up more emotionally potent and vivid memories than words, sounds, or looks can. If you want to be remembered well, apply a nice fragrance before you make your move. If she likes the smell, then she’s more likely to react positively to you and may also attribute the attractive smell to an attractive you—if you make a good impression, of course.
There are, of course, many other factors that come into play in the dating game. There may be some girls who don’t actually care about how you smell. But, from what I’ve learned and read, wearing a fragrance she likes can definitely help a guy out.
Citations
- Major histocompatibility complex genes, symmetry, and body scent attractiveness in men and women from Behavioral Ecology by Oxford Journals <http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/5/668.full>
Article by Nicole Marie Barcega
Feature Image Source: LearnEnglish Teens