Study: Women Know You're Attracted to Them by Scent

Approach enough girls and it becomes pretty obvious that women can kind of tell when you genuinely want them versus when you’re just phoning it in.

You might wonder though, how do they tell? Is it the way you smile? Some subtle change in your behavior? A study by psychologists at Houston’s Rice University found women respond subconsciously to men’s “sexual sweat”:

Our results here show that the brain also recognizes the socioemotional information contained in the human sexual sweat. This is so despite the facts that subjects were verbally unaware of the nature of the olfactory stimuli and that the intensity and pleasantness differences had been statistically controlled for. Our findings provide olfactory evidence that the right orbitofrontal cortex and the right fusiform participate in the processing of chemosensory human socioemotional information. Moreover, they also offer neural support for the existence of affective communication through human sociochemosensory cues, a subject extensively studied in animal research but hitherto little known in humans.

Women do not consciously realize they’re responding to the scent of a man’s sweat (the study examined only women smelling men’s scents). It happens at a level below that of conscious awareness. But they nevertheless still do recognize it, and their brains respond in a different way to sexual sweat than they do to neutral sweat or other smells.

 

How Women’s Brains Respond to ‘Sexual Sweat’

The psychologists collected the armpit sweat of 20 straight men under two different conditions:

1. Watching a 20-minute educational documentary (to collect a ‘neutral sweat’ sample)

2. Watching 20 minutes of sexually arousing videos (to collect a ‘sexual sweat’ sample)

They then pooled sweat from multiple men together and had straight women not on hormonal contraceptives smell the sweat. The women rated men’s sexual sweat 40% more intense in scent than neutral sweat, though slightly less pleasant.

The brain scans on the women were just as interesting. While men’s neutral scent caused no real change in women’s brain activity – leaving women more or less ‘in autopilot’ when they smelled it – men’s sexual scent caused a 10-15% change in brain activity in three different regions of women’s brains (the right orbitofrontal cortex, right fusiform region, and right hypothalamus).

What do these regions of the brain do?

• The fusiform face area is used for recognizing faces.

• The orbitofrontal cortex is used for decision making.

• The hypothalamus regulars (among other things) the release of hormones.

So, when a woman smells a man’s neutral scent, nothing happens in her brain. She continues as she was before, on autopilot.

However, when she smells sexual sweat from a man, three things happen:

1. She begins paying attention to faces around her.

2. Her decision-making snaps into action.

3. Her body gears up to start release hormones.

All fascinating stuff, no?

 

How Do Women Respond to ‘Sexually Sweating Men’?

The study above only examined whether women recognize men’s sexual sweat and how it affects their brains. It did not look at their actual behavior.

However, we have other studies on male scents and female behavior. For instance, this 2013 study found that “conception risk in the cycle positively predicted women's scent ratings of men's [testosterone].” In other words, the more likely a woman is to become pregnant, the more favorably she rates testosterone in a male’s scent.

What is the difference between ‘neutral sweat’ and ‘sexual sweat’? The Rice University study didn’t examine it. However, if I had to guess – and I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb – I suspect we’d find the biggest difference is that sexual sweat contains more testosterone. After all, we know that when men’s sexual arousal goes up, so too do their testosterone levels.

So:

1. Horny men produce more testosterone.

2. This stepped-up testosterone (probably) is what women smell in their scent.

3. Fertile women are more attracted to men with more testosterone.

Put simply, horny women are more interested in horny men.

 

Responses to Sexual Sweat Are Learned

So, this female response to male odor – is it pure animal instinct, or is it learned?

Based on studies with other animals, such as cats, it’s probably safe to say women need to learn to associate the ‘horny male scent’ with sexual stimuli. Young, sexually inexperienced female cats, like other mammals, do not automatically associate male scents with mating until they get some sexual experience. After this, they learn to associate these scents.

If it’s a learned response, then we should expect a few things are quite possibly happening in women:

• Women who are fertile and looking to mate should be particularly attuned for sexual, horny men. They should both be more excited about ones they find attractive, and more creeped out by ones they don’t (fertile women behave physically stronger and use more rape-avoidance behaviors – they really don’t want a guy they don’t want knocking them up).

• Women who are not at a fertile phase of their cycle (or are on hormonal birth control) but who are looking for a companion should also be attuned to sexual, horny men – since these men are signaling that they (unlike many men who may be ‘off the market’) are looking for women.

It’s been my experience that being in a somewhat sexual mindset gives you an edge meeting women. I talked about it in two of my earliest articles on Girls Chase. Plenty of other seducers have discussed this too.

It’s also conventional wisdom among seducers that going out to approach women after having sex, with the ‘scent of sex’ on you, acts as an attractant to women. Whether that is because women are smelling all the testosterone from your sweat secreted during sex, or they are smelling the woman’s body odor on you (serving as preselection), is unclear – perhaps it’s a mix of both.

Either way, it seems clear that women ‘smelling sex’ on you (i.e., testosterone oozing out of your veins due to either you being turned on or you having just had sex) serves to shake women out of autopilot and attract to you women who are looking for men (and who also find you attractive).

 

Male Interest as a Pattern Interrupt

When a woman can tell (either through scent or through other nonverbals) you are genuinely interested in and attracted to her, it’s a pattern interrupt.

Women get approached plenty by guys who are just “taking a shot” but aren’t really all that wildly into them. Such men will be social, make some nice conversation with them, perhaps even flirt a bit, but they often never manage to wake women up out of autopilot.

If a girl can tell a guy is genuinely, sincerely interested in her – if she can FEEL it – she is forced to stand up and take note. This is a man with hormones swirling through him. This is a man who might DO something.

Depending on her interest levels, and how intense she picks up on his interest levels being, that could be a desirable or undesirable thing:

1. If he’s clearly genuinely interested, and she finds him attractive, this is exciting for her and she will feel a need to encourage this and see where it goes.

2. If he’s clearly genuinely interested, but she is NOT interested, it’s a bit unsettling and she will feel a need to get away from him.

3. If he’s clearly VERY interested, and she finds him attractive, and is also very desirous of something happening NOW, she will get VERY excited too, and try to help speed things along.

4. If he’s clearly VERY interested, and she finds him attractive, but she isn’t ready to move THAT fast, she will be happy but will try to put the brakes on things a bit and slow him down.

5. If he’s clearly VERY interested, but she is NOT interested, she will feel very awkward, or perhaps even creeped out (depending on how intense and insistent he is), and will feel a strong need to get away from him.

All these shake a woman far out of autopilot and compel her to DO something – either get closer to him or get away.

 

When You’re Still Learning to Be Attractive…

You are generally better erring more on the side of being the cool, sociable guy, who is NOT going around burning with desire, because it will get you more positive responses.

Women who aren’t interested in you will be sociable and friendly. They may not be attractive, but they will give you a nice conversation.

Women who ARE interested in you will also be sociable and friendly. They won’t be as excited about you as they would be if they could TELL you were excited about them, but they won’t turn you away.

You won’t close as many girls this way. But you will accrue more positive experiences and get past those initial worries that chatting up women will make you a ‘creepy guy’ or is some major social violation.

Once your confidence is up, and your fundamentals and game are tight enough that many girls respond well to you, however, it is time to start adding more sexual intent to your approach.

 

Sexual Intent as a Polarizing Force

When you’re using sexual intent (i.e., when you are in a sexual state and causing women to have that ‘shaken out of autopilot’ response around you), you become much more polarizing.

Women who would have politely chatted with you largely on autopilot before get ‘kicked into gear’. Those three brain regions get activated, and they start producing hormones of their own, examining you much more carefully, and get kicked into decision mode.

Women who decide they don’t want something intimate with you will begin to feel uncomfortable and will want to leave. Women who decide they DO want something intimate with you will begin to feel excited and will want to be closer.

Thus, this force polarizes.

You have a few options on how you use it:

1. From the outset as a screening tool. Some men like to go out already in sexual state so that right from the jump they draw in women who want what they do and repel women who don’t. This can make screening game much more efficient (i.e., no wasted time on insufficiently interested girls; meanwhile, highly interested girls make their interest much more obvious). The first catch is that men who aren’t sufficiently skilled or sexy yet can’t use this method – they’ll just creep out every girl. The second catch is that if you go too strong with this approach, you can end up scaring off girls who might’ve gotten together with you after a date or two, or even that day after a more thorough seduction, but were not ready for it then and there when you came barreling in oozing sex.

2. Mid-seduction as a screening & escalation tool. Many seducers seek to begin raising the level of sexual intent they show as they proceed through a courtship. They do this to escalate the vibe and transition the girl from social to sexual to intimate stages of the seduction. One advantage of this is that it gives you more time to prepare a girl for the transition to sexual – you build more trust and familiarity with her first. One disadvantage of it is that you run the risk of spending time on a girl who likes talking to you socially but shuts things down once they start getting too sexual… but you don’t find that out until after already having spent a good deal of time on her. Whoops…

3. Late seduction as an escalation tool. Some guys don’t switch to sexual until they’re alone with the girl. This is most common in inexperienced seducers, who worry that as soon as they switch to sexual the girl will run off, so they put it off as long as possible. This gives the guy much more time to build trust and comfort. The drawback is you won’t know how she’ll react to you taking things sexual until you do, and if you don’t make that switch until you’re alone with her at home, you can run into lots of last-minute resistance, as well as high numbers of failed mating attempts.

Which of these works best?

I suggest:

• From the outset for men who are experienced, attractive, have some momentum going, and are hard on the prowl. If you have all these things going on, you can frontload your sexual intent and will attract interested girls, whom you can then easily close.

• From the middle for men who are less experienced, less attractive, have less momentum built up, and/or are not as hard on the prowl. Less experienced men with poorer fundamentals will get a LOT of rejections if they try front-loading sexual intent too much. It is better for them to wait until they are well into a solid seduction for this. Experienced, attractive seducers who are on low momentum or who are just not that geared up for girls right now and would prefer a more conversational approach first are also typically going to be better served by starting out social and only later transitioning to sexual.

I don’t suggest ANY guy stick to waiting to sexualize things until the girl’s alone with him at his place (or her place, or another seduction spot).

I know this can feel the ‘safest’ when you are inexperienced, but all it really does is put tons of pressure on you and the girl. It’s better to turn things sexual to some extent before you pull (just not so much that she balks because she ‘knows what will happen’ – she should suspect what might happen, but she shouldn’t know for sure!).

 

Wrap Up

So girls can tell you’re tuned in by your scent.

If you’re horny, they can smell it on you. My guess would be that the hornier you are, the stronger the scent and the more obvious it is.

This can be VERY USEFUL as a screening tool – especially for advanced guys who want to move fast. Less advanced guys still getting their game and fundamentals in order need to be more careful with it, as do guys who are rusty.

But if you’re not advanced – or are rusty – you can still walk around with a bit of sexual energy dialed up. Don’t make it too intense; but a higher level of sexuality than ‘neutral’ can still serve as a pattern interrupt and help you better recognize girls who are actually interested… and get them to recognize (and make themselves known to) you.

Chase

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