SCENT OF A MAN CAN DRIVE WOMEN TO DRINK: REPORT.

Study shows link between scent and alcohol use

The mere scent of a male can drive women to drink, new research suggests.

Women who thought they were participating in a consumer survey of men’s cologne drank more beer when they were exposed to cologne that, unbeknownst to them, had been scented with androstenone — a sex pheromone in boars.

“We inferred that detection of male sexual scents, even in the absence of awareness, may instigate drinking because of the long-standing cultural association between alcohol use and sex,” the researchers summarized in the journal, Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

“These findings may have important implications for understanding and treating alcohol use disorders.”

In an earlier paper, the same team found men who smelled T-shirts worn by women in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycles drank more beer than men who smelled shirts worn by nonfertile females. They were also more likely to approach a woman.

“Evolutionary theory says that men and women behave in ways to maximize their reproductive success,” said co-author Robin Tan, of the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

“Alcohol is a social lubricant,” Tan said. It also makes people less sexually inhibited.

Tan and co-author Dr. Mark Goldman, of the University of South Florida, hypothesized that women exposed to a male scent would drink more “presumably because they viewed alcohol use as a pathway to sexual expression.”

For their experiment, they used androstenone, a derivative of testosterone and a potent component of male body odour thought to act like a male sex pheromone. In a 1980 study, researchers who sprayed androstenone on chairs in a dentist’s waiting room found women preferred the odorized seats (men avoided them). Other studies have found no effect on women’s preferences.

The new study included 103 undergraduate females between 21 and 31 years old. The women were told they were part of a consumer study rating male cologne and different beverages (sparkling water, soda or beer, though all received only the “beer,” which, for safety reasons, was non-alcoholic.)

The researchers cautioned that deliberately sniffing scents in a lab might not mimic real world social settings, like a bar.

Still, the studies taken together hint at a “never-before-discussed biobehavioural pathway” that can influence how much people drink, Tan and Goldman wrote. It might help explain why drinking and binge drinking ramps up during the teen years and the onset of puberty, they added.