Can Your Sister Choose a Perfume That Suits You?

When giving someone perfume, you may wonder whether a scent you like is also one that suits them. If you know the person well, can you accurately imagine how it will smell when they wear it?

In 2017, Markéta Sobotková and colleagues at Charles University published research comparing perfumes chosen by men themselves with those selected for them by women close to them. In one experiment, the women were romantic partners; in the other, they were sisters. The study explored whether biological relatedness might play a role in perfume selection.

Why ask partners and sisters to choose?

The starting point was the combination of perfume and body odor. An article on earlier research described an experiment in which blends of body odor and self-selected perfume were rated more favorably than blends using an assigned perfume. People may choose fragrances that suit their own body odor.

The researchers added findings from earlier work suggesting that relatives’ body odors share similarities. If people use their own body odor as a cue when choosing perfume, might sisters, whose body odors have features in common with their brothers’, also choose suitable fragrances for them? Conversely, might unrelated romantic partners choose less suitable combinations than the men themselves? The authors predicted that sisters’ choices would perform as well as self-selected perfumes, while partners’ choices would perform less well.

Combining the chosen perfumes with actual body odor

Participants were young men who did not normally wear perfume, together with their romantic partners or biological sisters. Twenty-four men’s fragrances were prepared with a perfumer’s assistance. Selection took place in two stages: participants first chose two preferred categories from six scents, then selected one perfume from eight candidates in those categories. Men independently chose what they wanted to wear, while women chose what they thought would suit the men.

Each man applied his self-selected perfume to one armpit and the woman’s choice to the other, collecting odor on cotton pads for 12 hours. The assignment of perfume to side was randomized. Twenty women other than those who selected the perfumes smelled the pads and rated pleasantness, attractiveness, intensity, and masculinity. They evaluated odors in containers, not the men’s attractiveness including their appearance or behavior.

No clear difference for perfumes chosen by partners

Sixteen couples selected perfumes in the first experiment. Four chose the same perfume, so samples from the 12 couples who chose different perfumes were used for comparison, with one same-perfume pair serving as a control.

Blends with partner-selected perfumes had a higher average pleasantness rating than self-selected blends, but the difference did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.051). Attractiveness also showed no significant difference, and the predicted advantage for self-selection was not found. The result cannot be read as showing that partners choose better, either.

Perfumes chosen by sisters received higher attractiveness ratings

The second experiment involved 12 men and their sisters. Here, blends of body odor and sister-selected perfume were rated as more attractive than blends with the men’s own choices (p = 0.008). There were no significant differences in pleasantness, intensity, or masculinity.

The researchers had predicted equal evaluations for sisters’ and men’s own choices. The higher attractiveness of sister-selected blends therefore exceeded their prediction. However, this experiment involved different men from the first. Since partners and sisters did not select perfumes for the same men, the results cannot rank sisters as better selectors than partners.

Were the perfumes themselves simply preferred?

The team also asked other men and women to evaluate the perfumes without body odor. In both experiments, perfumes selected by the men and by the women did not differ significantly in attractiveness or pleasantness when smelled alone. However, sister-selected perfumes were rated as more masculine on their own. The perfumes did not give identical impressions on every measure.

Nevertheless, sisters’ selections outperformed self-selections in attractiveness when combined with body odor, not when the perfumes were evaluated alone. The authors take this distinction as a clue to the importance of the combination with each man’s body odor. The result is difficult to explain solely as greater liking for the perfume itself.

Relatedness, or knowing the other person?

The authors discuss the possibility that sisters can more easily select perfumes that suit the odors of their genetically similar brothers. They also consider an evolutionary explanation: enhancing a brother’s attractiveness could increase opportunities for genes shared with him to pass to the next generation. This is a hypothesis based on the concept of “inclusive fitness.” The experiment did not examine genes or numbers of offspring, nor did it establish why sisters made their choices.

Other explanations remain possible. The authors suggest that women might have found it easier to imagine the blend of body odor and perfume, or that men and women use different selection criteria. However, previous research has also found no sex difference in odor-imagery ability, so the result cannot be attributed conclusively to women’s abilities.

Familiarity with the other person also deserves attention. Four of the 16 couples chose the same perfume, more agreement than expected by chance. None of the 12 sibling pairs did so. The authors suggest that partners may have known which scents the men liked. Matching someone’s preference and producing a worn odor that other people find attractive emerged as distinct outcomes.

The samples were small and consisted of young men, while raters of the blended odors were limited to women using hormonal contraception. Perfume candidates and the selection procedure were also predetermined. Separating relatedness from familiarity would require comparisons in which partners and sisters choose for the same person, as well as experiments with women as wearers.

Conclusion

This research broadened the question of whether the ability to choose a suitable perfume extends to people close to the wearer. Although the perfumes alone did not differ significantly in attractiveness, sister-selected perfumes combined with the men’s body odors were rated as more attractive than self-selected blends. The result suggests that perfume selection depends on its relationship with the wearer’s odor, and that someone other than the wearer may also perceive that compatibility.

The authors focused on relatedness because shared features of body odor might allow people to use their own odor as a cue when selecting a fragrance for a relative. That mechanism remains hypothetical, but the study is meaningful in making “whom we choose for” a question in perfume research, encompassing knowledge of someone’s preferences and the ability to imagine a blend. Finding a suitable perfume may involve both preferences for the fragrance itself and how we know the person who will wear it.

References

Authors: Markéta Sobotková, Jitka Fialová, S. Craig Roberts, Jan Havlíček
Article: Effect of Biological Relatedness on Perfume Selection for Others: Preliminary Evidence
Journal: Perception 46(3–4), 498–515 (2017)
DOI: 10.1177/0301006616682514
Full text: PDF available on an author’s website
Original article rights statement: © The Author(s) 2016. The full-text PDF does not display a Creative Commons license.