426 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS Table XI Comparison of Mean Pleasantness Rating for Most Pleasant and Least Pleasant T-shirt (Wilcoxon matched pairs signed ranks test) Most Pleasant Rating Least Pleasant Rating Female Respondents Mean q- SD Mean q- SD z p (2-tailed) I Women's shirts Shirt 12 4.44 .78 Shirt 13 3.46 1.13 2.48 .013 Men's shirts 15 4.06 1.15 14 1.69 1.02 3.30 .001 II Women's shirts 10 3.90 1.58 7 3.21 1.91 1.57 .117 Men's shirts 9 4.14 1.46 7 2.68 1.56 2.94 .003 Male Respondents I Women's shirts 12 (.75 1.67 14 4.03 1.00 2.07 .038 Men's shirts 15 4.4l 1.49 11 2.40 1.03 3.35 .001 II Women's shirts 10 4.22 1.24 7 3.53 1.27 2.51 .012 Men's shirts 9 4.24 .97 7 3.16 1.20 2.54 .011 VII) are, on the whole, less consistent and lower than between concentration and pleas- antness (Table VI) may seem surprising at first sight. It must be born in mind, how- ever, that Table VII records the relationship between intensity perception and pleasant- ness perception at a given concentration /eve/.' it takes into account only the intensity differences due to subjective factors, not those due to the objective factor, concentra- tion. This is true also for the "overall" correlations for solutions 1-5. The different correlation patterns are curious: for substance II one can say, at all con- centration levels studied, that "the more strongly one perceives it, the more unpleasant one finds it." It is simply an odor that nearly everybody considers inherently un- pleasant. With androstenol and substance III, there appears to be, for many people, a most pleasant level that is low but higher than 0. With male respondents, the correla- tions between intensity and pleasantness are not significant at any concentration level with female respondents, they are significant and negative only at the two highest concentration levels. (We have no reasonable explanation for the significant negative correlation, with women, at the lowest concentration level of III.) The finding (Table V) that for these two substances the relationship between concentration and pleasantness shows a far clearer trend at higher concentrations (solutions 1-3) than at lower concen- trations (solutions 3-5) is in line with this interpretation. With cyclopentadecanolide there is no consistent pattern linking pleasantness ratings to perceived intensity at a given concentration (Table VII), nor pleasantness to concentra- tion (Table V). Here, the interpretation "some like it strong" appears appropriate. It must be remembered, for this and all other findings of this test, that the odors were smelled on T-shirts in a context in which they were judged "as body odors." Different relationships between intensity and pleasantness might well have resulted had they been smelled on smelling blotters or in perfume bottles as aromatic chemicals or as perfumes. With the T-shirts actually worn, a pattern is apparent that is also present with andros- tenol and III: the negative correlation between perceived intensity and pleasantness, that is, the feeling that "strong is unpleasant," is stronger with female than with male respondents. This is particularly pronounced with the shirts worn by males where all shirts give, among female respondents, negative correlations (see Table VII). This

HUMAN BODY ODOR 427 finding that women reject the more intensive body odors, or body-like odors, more strongly than do men confirms Schleidt's observations (5). SEX ATTRIBUTION Perhaps the most surprising finding of the study is the fact that a significant majority both of male and of female respondents attributed the shirts that had been treated with androstenol to female wearers, at all concentration levels tested. This is unexpected in view of the fact that androstenol and the closely related andros- tenone occur in human plasma (10) and in axillary sweat (11) at far higher concentra- tions in men than in women and would, therefore, be expected to be associated with male body odor. Actually, the results of the behavioral experiments thus far reported in no way conflict with the notion that androstenol is predominantly perceived as female. In the dentist's chair experiment (12), one would expect the observed pattern of response (selection by women, avoidance by men) if the chair had smelled of some feminine perfume. In the rating of photographs (13), it was the females, not the males, that were judged more attractive and sexy in the presence of androstenol. Our finding does, however, throw additional doubt (if such were needed) on the claims of mail-order sex aid houses that men's lotions containing androstenol are sexual attractants to women. Another novel finding was the concentration dependence of sex attribution, found both for substance II and for substance III. Although novel, this finding was not unexpected in view of the earlier reported tendency to associate stronger body odors with men and fainter odors with women. As to the sex attribution of cyclopentadecanolide, we cannot rule out the possibility that the predominantly female attribution of shirts treated with this substance was due to an association with women's perfumes rather than with female bodies. The predominantly correct sex assignment of the shirts worn by women and by men impressively replicates the findings of Schleidt eta/. (5), as do the tendencies to at- tribute stronger and less pleasant odors to men and fainter and more pleasant odors to women. It is fascinating to observe how two patterns that are commonplace in the field of general aesthetics are also reflected in the olfactory field: (1) the "beauty and the beast" pattern, i.e., the notion that (young) women are more esthetically pleasing than men, (2) the greater prevalence among women of the tendency to judge by esthetic criteria: the differences in intensity are perceived equally by men and women,* but the women associate them more strongly with "pleasing" or "not pleasing." SUMMARY In the present study, it was shown that when the synthetic body odor analogues II and III are presented to human subjects under conditions where they might be taken for * Equal ability to perceive differences does not necessarily mean equal awareness of them in daily life. The design of the experiment inevitably induced high odor awareness among all respondents there is consider- able evidence that normally odor awareness is higher among women than among men.