Evidence for Human Pheromones
Russell, Switz, & Thompson (1980) conducted an experiment:
- A donor female wore cotton pads in her underarms for 24 hours, three times a week.
- Sweat extracted made into a solution; this was rubbed onto the upper lips of women in treatment group. Control women received same treatment but no sweat
Control: Average 9.3 days between donor and recipient onset of menstrual cycles became 3.4 days; No similar synchrony was detected in the control experiment.
As donor and recipients had no other contact, authors suggested that chemical communication was the cause of the change. Later studies showed one type of pheromone (ovulatory pheromone) tended to increase cycle length, another tended to decrease it (folli