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      Menstrual cycle variation in women's preferences for the scent of symmetrical men

      1 , 2
      Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
      The Royal Society

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          Abstract

          Evidence suggests that female sexual preferences change across the menstrual cycle. Women's extra-pair copulations tend to occur in their most fertile period, whereas their intra-pair copulations tend to be more evenly spread out across the cycle. This pattern is consistent with women preferentially seeking men who evidence phenotypic markers of genetic benefits just before and during ovulation. This study examined whether women's olfactory preferences for men's scent would tend to favour the scent of more symmetrical men, most notably during the women's fertile period. College women sniffed and rated the attractiveness of the scent of 41 T-shirts worn over a period of two nights by different men. Results indicated that normally cycling (non-pill using) women near the peak fertility of their cycle tended to prefer the scent of shirts worn by symmetrical men. Normally ovulating women at low fertility within their cycle, and women using a contraceptive pill, showed no significant preference for either symmetrical or asymmetrical men's scent. A separate analysis revealed that, within the set of normally cycling women, individual women's preference for symmetry correlated with their probability of conception, given the actuarial value associated with the day of the cycle they reported at the time they smelled the shirts. Potential sexual selection processes and proximate mechanisms accounting for these findings are discussed.

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          Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests

          Psychometrika, 16(3), 297-334
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            Biological signals as handicaps.

            An ESS model of Zahavi's handicap principle is constructed. This allows a formal exposition of how the handicap principle works, and shows that its essential elements are strategic. The handicap model is about signalling, and it is proved under fairly general conditions that if the handicap principle's conditions are met, then an evolutionarily stable signalling equilibrium exists in a biological signalling system, and that any signalling equilibrium satisfies the conditions of the handicap principle. Zahavi's major claims for the handicap principle are thus vindicated. The place of cheating is discussed in view of the honesty that follows from the handicap principle. Parallel signalling models in economics are discussed. Interpretations of the handicap principle are compared. The models are not fully explicit about how females use information about male quality, and, less seriously, have no genetics. A companion paper remedies both defects in a model of the handicap principle at work in sexual selection.
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              MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans.

              One substantial benefit of sexual reproduction could be that it allows animals (including humans) to react rapidly to a continuously changing environmental selection pressure such as coevolving parasites. This counteraction would be most efficient if the females were able to provide their progeny with certain allele combinations for loci which may be crucial in the parasite-host arms race, for example the MHC (major histocompatibility complex). Here we show that the MHC influences both body odours and body odour preferences in humans, and that the women's preferences depend on their hormonal status. Female and male students were typed for their HLA-A, -B and -DR. Each male student wore a T-shirt for two consecutive nights. The next day, each female student was asked to rate the odours of six T-shirts. They scored male body odours as more pleasant when they differed from the men in their MHC than when they were more similar. This difference in odour assessment was reversed when the women rating the odours were taking oral contraceptives. Furthermore, the odours of MHC-dissimilar men remind the test women more often of their own actual or former mates than do the odours of MHC-similar men. This suggests that the MHC or linked genes influence human mate choice today.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
                Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B
                The Royal Society
                0962-8452
                1471-2954
                May 22 1998
                May 22 1998
                May 22 1998
                May 22 1998
                : 265
                : 1399
                : 927-933
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
                [2 ]Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA (, )
                Article
                10.1098/rspb.1998.0380
                1689051
                9633114
                20dbf65d-3284-4a3a-8092-d4d9f7233ab7
                © 1998
                History

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