NOL and RONE STUDY - Interesting
A link to
this was posted on the research forum by Einstein, but I wanted to make sure there could be some discussion on
it:
Influence of Androstenol and Androsterone on the evaluation of men of varying attractiveness levels.
R.E. Maiworm, W.U. Langthaler. Münster. Chemical Signals in Vertebraes, 1992.
INTRODUCTION
The components
of human axillary secretions, especially odoriferous steroids, may take part in human olfactory communication in a
manner analogous to the odours from specialized skin glands in animals (Labows et al.,1982). Filsinger & Fabes
(1985), for expample, suggest that some of them (especially androstenol, androstenone) may be putative human
pheromones. With regard to androstenol and androstenone, evidence has been found for aconnection between these
odoriferous substances and the covert or open behavior of the receivers (e.g., assessment of person, self-ratings,
choice of locations: cf. Kirk-Smith, 1978; Filsinger & Fabes, 1985; Benton & Wastell, 1986). However, it has not
been shown that such substances function as human pheromones and induce a definite behavior or physiological
response.
In contrast to androstenol, androsterone is a weakly androgenic steroid. As a part of steroid
metabolism in the skin, androsterone is metabolized from dihydroepiandrosterone (Sharp et al., 1976; Kaufmann et
al., 1990). Androsterone is found in lipids coating the axillary hair and may be secreted by sebaceous glands (Toth,
1983). Labows et al. (1979) found no free androsterone in fresh apocrine Becretion, although free androsterone was
found after the secretion was acted on by bacteria. Androsterone is also found in human urine. This steriod has a
musky odor and olfactory properties (e.g., Bubjective intensity) similar to those of androstenol (Kloek, 1961).
Little information is available about the influence of androsterone on the open or covert behavior of
humans. Gustavson et al. (1987) used androsterone as a control odor to androstenol when testing its influence on
human choice behavior (rest room stalls). They did not find any effects of androsterone on the behavior of either
men or women.
In a previous study, androstenol, as well as androstenone, was found to influence the
self-ratings of the mood of female subjects. Furthermore, Maiworm and Langthaler (1990) found an effect of
androstenone on women's assessment of photographs of moderately attractive men. This effect was related to the
stage of the menstrual cycle.
The present study examines the potential influence of
5-alpha-androst-16-en-alpha-ol and 3-alpha-hydroxy-5-alpha-androsten-17-one on the assessment of the attractiveness
and other attributes of men. We hypothesized that, compared to two control groups (namely solvent and no treatment),
androstenol and androsterone will influence women's subjective ratings of the attractiveness and other attributes
of photographed men. The effects of the substances were expected to vary with the degree of the attractiveness of
the men, as determined from peer ratings.
METHODS
The double-blind study, in which 102 female students
(mean age = 23.3 years) participated, was conducted by two female experimenters. The subjects were paid a moderate
amount of money to participate.
In an earlier study photographs of 60 men and women had been taken under
standardized conditions. The attractiveness had been assessed by 118 female and male students. For the pre6ent
study, we choose 5 men from this sample whose mean attractiveness scores covered the range of the attractivenss
scores of the sample; namely, a scarely attractive man (value 24), a less attractive man (value 48), a moderately
attractive man (value 53), and two highly attractive men (value 65, 72).
At the beginning of each session, a
standardized questionnaire was administered to assess each subject's state of mood (EWL; Jahnke & Debus, 1978). One
of the three test substances was app1ied to the upper lip of each of ten subjects. The olfactory stimuli were stored
in air-tight, 2.5 ml plastic containers. Each container held 1.5 ml of either androstenol, androstenol, androsterone
(1 mg/ml), or the control stimulus ethanol (99%, research grade). In one control condition, no test substance was
applied. The subject subsequently rated five randomly presented photographs of men, one by one, on 30 bipolar
adjective scales developed in the course of a former study (Maiworm & Langthaler, 1990), and on a 100-point
attractiveness scale which ranged from "1" (indicating "not attractive") to "100" (indicating "highly attractive").
After the assessment of the photographs, the questionnaire about the subject's mood state was again administered
and the subjects were interviewed (e.g., about menstrual cycle phase and oralcontracptive use). A multifactorial two
(experimental) by two (control) experimental design was used. The data were analyzed by a MANOVA with adjusted alpha
levels (SPSS; Statistical Package for Social Science; two factorial model and contrasts).
RESULTS
The
test substances and the phases of the menstrual cycle had an effect on the assessments (interaction, p < 0.006). The
use of oral contraceptives also influenced the evaluations (main effect, p < 0.034) and the phase of the menstrual
cycle (main effect p < 0.001). In accord with a previous study, the data showed that the assessment of men under the
influence of androstenol is related to menstrual cycle phase (p < 0.005; main effect). Relative to the third phase
(days 20-29), the evaluations concerning "open" (p < 0.05) were more positive during the first phase (days 1-9) and
the evaluations of "attractive" (p < 0.05) were more positive during the second phase (days 10-19). A relationship
between the influence of androsterone and menstrual cycle phase was present for the assessment "expressive" (p <
0.05 between the first and third and the second and third cycle phases). Androsterone was found to have a
significant impact on the subjects who rated the men as "warm" (p <0.01), "good" (p < 0.01), "masculine" (p < 0.05)
and "black" (p < 0.05), whereas androstenol significantly influenced the ratings of "black" (p. < 0.05). within one
of the control groups (no treatment), the assessment of the attributes "macho" was affected by the phase of the
menstrual cycle (p < 0.05). Androsterone raised the attractiveness ratings for the more attractive men, and lowered
the attractiveness ratings for the less attractive men. The ratings of the higher attractive men (photographs) were
more strongly influenced by the test substances than those of the scarcely or moderately attractive man (Table 1;
contrasts by MANOVA, t-tests, alpha level adjusted).
The subjects' ratings concerning the personality
profile and their mood states were within the range of values of the standard sample. A comparison (paired t-tests)
of the pre/post-test scores indicated that the women described themselves as less tired (p < 0.05), less sensitive
(p < 0.05), and less depressed (P < 0.05) under the androstenol condition at the end of the session than at the
beginning. within the androsterone condition, they also described themselves as less sensitivie (p < 0.05). At the
end of the test session the women described themselves as less-assured and more anxious under the androsterone
condition than under the control condition (p < 0.05).
DISCUSSION
The hypothesis concerning the influence
of androstenol and androsterone was confirmed. Both substances had an effect on the womens. subjective perception of
the attractiveness and other attributes of the photographed men, and this effect varied with the degree of
peer-rated attractivenss of the men. With respect to androsterone, this result was unexpected, since to our
knowledge this there is no mention of this phenomenon in the literature. However, we did not find a specific
pattern; factor analyses did not yield any components that explained a satisfactorily high percentage of the
variance. Since there was no significant difference in the ratings of the men between the control conditions
(ethanol, no treatment), androstenol and androsterone appear to have an impact on the assessments. Somehow, both
substances function as "levellers" by raising the evaluation of moderately attractive men and by lowering the
evaluation of the higher attractive man (tendency towards the mean). The effects of androstenol on the estimation of
other attributes were also found to be influenced by the menstrual cycle, which, in a previous study (Maiworm &
Langthaler, 1990), turned out to be more evident for androstenone. The men were evaluated much more negatively in
the third part of the menstrual cycle. Under the influence of both substances, the assessments of erotic attributes
(sexy, erotic) tended to be more negative, whereas the assessments of non-sexual attributes (e.g., emotional, warm,
sensitive, nice) tended to be more positive. Within the androstenol condition, the women described themselves as
being in a good mood (less depressed, active), whereas in the androsterone condition, they described themselves as
being less self-assured and courageous.
REFERENCES
Benton, D., and Wastell, V., 1986, Effects of
androstenol on human sexual arousal, Biological Psychology, 22:141-l47.
Filsinger, E.E., Braun, J.J., and Monte,
W.C., 1985, An examination of the effects of putative pheromones on human judgements, Ethology and Sociobiology, 6,
227-236.
Filsinger, E.E. and Fabes. R.A., 1985, Odor communication, pheromones and human families, Journal of
Marriage and the Familv, 47, 3 49-359.
Gustavson. A.R., Dawson, ME., and Bonnet, D.G., 1987, Androstenol, a
putative human pheromone, affects human (Homo sapiens) male choice performance. Journal of Comparative Psychology,
101, 210-212.
Jahnke, W., and Debus, G., 1978, Die Eigenschaftswörterliste. EWL. Hogrefe. Gottingen.
Kaufmann,
F.R., Stancyk, F.Z., and Gentzschein, E, 1990, DHT and DHTS metabolism in human genital skin. Fertility and
Sterilitv, 54, 251-254.
Kirk-Smith, M., Booth, D.A., Caroll, D., and Davies, P., 1978, Human social attitudes
affected by androstenol. Research Communications in Psychology. Psychiatry and Behavior, 3, 379-384.
Kloek, J.,
1961, The smell of some sex-hormones and their metabolites. Reflections and experiments concerning the significance
of smell for the mutual relation of the sexes. Psychiatria. Neurologia. Neurochirurgia, 64, 106-344.
Labows,
J.N., Preti, G., Hoelzle, E., Leyden, J., and Kligman, A., 1979, steriod analysis of human apocrine secretion.
Steriods, 34, 249-258.
Labows, J.N., McGinley, K.J., and Kligman, A., 1982, Perspectives on axillary odor.
Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists., 34, 193-202.
Maiworm, R.E. & Langthaler, 1990, Influences of
androstenol, androsterone, menstrual cycle andoral contraceptives on the attractivity ratings of female probands.
Ninth Conaress of the ECCO. The Netherlands, 2-7.9, 1990.
Sharp, F., Hay, J.B., Hodgins, M.B., 1976, Journal Qf
Endocrinoloay, 70, 491.
Toth, I., and Faredin, L., 1983, Steriods excreted by human skin. Acta Medica Hungaria,
40, 139-145.
Speed Reading For Pancho Posts
Read
the first and last sentence of every paragraph. :)
Seriously though ;) it also said it lowers the
perceived attractiveness for good looking people in one part of the literature.
More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about
Scientific Research Design 602
A.K.A., the "black" thing could have been a control condition, an
arbitrary dimension to test "method variance", or to get a handle on how much the experimental method itself might
have contributed to results. I'm not sure how neutral or arbitrary "black" is, though, as "black" may have
attraction connotations to some people. But it would be a design and statistical trick to reduce error variance,
which is like noise, to get a clearer picture of the "true effect" of experimental conditions (i.e., the -mones),
independent of method. Essentially, you are measuring a kind of noise, so you can factor it out (there are other
kinds of noise as well you can measure). Since they only used one method in this study (unless I'm missing
something) it might be like a calibrater that they could use for replications, in which they vary procedures across
the same "black" control condition, if that all makes sense. Then you'd be measuring what the type of experimental
method is doing to the results, and would potentially be able to put together information from different methods to
form a clearer picture of what you're trying to detect (the effect of pheromones).
In experimental design
theory, it's called improving "construct validity", where you're trying to test the pure effect of a real
theoretical force that you think exists in nature, like an astronomer or subatomic physicist trying to measure a
mysterious, faint, unknown force through all the "noise" and see it as clearly as possible. In this case, it's the
theoretical force of pheromones. To have strong construct validity, you must at least use multiple methods and
measure multiple aspects of what you're interested in (both the independent and dependent variables.) That's how
you determine accurate effect sizes, and work your way closer to measuring the real causes of things
scientifically, in terms of how much of a cause various things are relative to each other (e.g., any supposed
"independent forces" from visual, auditory, cognitive and olfactory information) and relative to the total variation
in the phenomenon you're looking at (e.g., attraction). We are far from being able to talk scientifically about the
relative causes of attraction, as these are not simple matters.
So do you all want to know one important reason
why I am not automatically impressed by studies "published in peer reviewed journals"? Well, although construct
validity is the most important type of validity you need to have in science, according to every cutting
edge expert in scientific research; most research published in journals having to do with human beings, such as
human pheromone research, has faulty, poor construct validity. And most people, even scientists, who consume
research have very little idea how to think about this issue critically, if they even acknowledge it as an
issue. This is one reason they end up thinking unsound, unscientific thoughts about the causes of things they are
interested in (e.g., being unable to think scientifically about how much pheromones really are a cause of
attraction, and being blissfully unaware that they can't!).
So if that is what Maiworm, et al, were
doing, it would be an indication they knew what they were doing with research design more than most. It's an
advanced, sophisticated procedure, even for a professional researcher. But I'd have to look at it closer, or have
access to more information, to do more than make an educated guess that that's what it was. They did not do a great
job of explaining this, and a few other things in the published version of the study. Oh well, it's hard to
find state of the art methodological researchers. But maybe there's a doctoral dissertation somewhere on one of
Maiworm's bookshelves that explains it.
:type:
Advanced attraction research methods,
continued
Good question! You are thinking critically about a "peer reviewed journal article," and not
just accepting it by authority. The answer is yes and no. It means only that noise may well be clouding our vision
to detect the real effect of pheromones that may be there. So yes, there's noise in the study that is interfering
in things. It doesn't look like they've found the way to filter it out, from the article. So even though this is
one of the most interesting reseachers studying pheromones, you still have to take it with a couple shakes of salt,
and the overall taste is not satisfying.
In particular, it means that the process of rating any trait in the
specific way that they did it, even an arbitrary one, might have influenced pheromone condition ratings a
certain amount, or vice versa. This is what I mean by "method effect". Another, more intuitive way of looking
at it is that the pheromones could influence the rating of any trait, even a neutral, random one. You're ready to
endorse anything at that point -- it could be "parrot" or "swiss cheese"! :) "Hey! Androsterone made subjects
rate these pictures as more "parrot"!" Either way, that amount, related to the 0.05 they quoted, is a first estimate
of the method effect. So the results you can take more seriously at this point, without more sophisticated
analysis or further information, are the ones with a smaller p value than 0.05, like 0.001 (the effect of ovulatory
phase).
Anyway, if you'd rate "black" by another method, you would see another method effect estimate, and the
more methods you use, the closer you'd get to seeing the theoretical "actual method effect" for that particular
procedure. But to do it right, you'd also want to measure more than one "arbitrary trait" in this case, like
"green" and "Portugese" or something (even parrot or swiss cheese!). Ideally, you'd get random adjectives from the
dictionary and keep pulling them out of a hat until you found some that appear to be "most neutral and arbitrary".
Three would be enough, realistically speaking.
But it's not even that simple. Since endorsing things is like
saying yes, and since saying yes to something is almost surely part of one's attraction to that thing, you are
presented with a problem in measuring the true method effect independent of your effect of interest (e.g.,
attracton). To get around this, you'd want to measure endorsing the same neutral thing in a "No" kind of way, like
"not black" or something. You could also leave the category optional and compare how many chose to rate it versus
not under the pheromone condition; and then compare that with the "endorsement effect" to get at the true method
effect. Research design isn't easy! I'd have to think about it more. But this is a cutting edge way of looking at
it that too few researchers are into as of yet. You are able to get much bigger effect sizes doing things this way,
and to get much more stunning results.
This kind of thing calibrates the measurement process for you. Research
on humans needs to be pretty damn sophisticated to be able to detect the kinds of complicated and subtle causal
forces you are studying. But once you get it aimed and focused, you can have a powerful and sensitive lens for
looking at human nature.
Until we start doing things like this in research, (and this just scratches the
surface) we'll have very little idea, scientifically speaking, how much pheromones effect anything! So don't
listen to anyone who tells you they already know. All human science researchers should do things like this in
every study to increase their construct validity. Do they? Too, too rarely. I know of no one in pheromone
research who does, as the field is not really attracting the most skilled research designers (I'll leave it to your
imagination whether or not I happen to fit into that category.:D). But these are the types of things Maiworm should
be thinking about in her office when putting studies together. And to expect biologist-types to know this stuff
without advanced training in psychological research (which I'm providing here, free of charge ;))? Forget it.
