The Pill messes with women's mate-choosing
The contraceptive pill may disrupt a woman’s natural ability to choose a partner genetically dissimilar to themselves, research at the Universities of Liverpool and Newcastle has found.
Disturbing a woman’s instinctive attraction to genetically different men could result in difficulties when trying to conceive, an increased risk of miscarriage and long intervals between pregnancies. Passing on a lack of diverse genes to a child could also weaken their immune system.
Humans choose partners through their body odour and tend to be attracted to those with a dissimilar genetic make-up to themselves, maintaining genetic diversity. Genes in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), which helps build the proteins involved in the body’s immune response, also play a prominent role in odour through interaction with skin bacteria. In this way these genes also help determine which individuals find us attractive.
Dr Craig Roberts, in collaboration with Professor Morris Gosling and Professor Marion Petrie from Newcastle University analysed how the contraceptive pill affects odour preferences. One hundred women were asked to indicate their preferences on six male body odour samples, drawn from 97 volunteer samples, before and after initiating contraceptive pill use.
Dr Roberts, a Lecturer in Evolutionary Psychology at Liverpool University, said: “The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odours.
“Not only could MHC-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners.”
The research, funded by the Wellcome Trust has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
The paper MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives. S. Craig Roberts, L. Morris Gosling, Vaughan Carter, & Marion Petrie
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Liverpool.
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August 13, 2008
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Comments
More on Odor Aversion
August 14, 2008 by Fred Bortz, 1 year 12 weeks ago
Comment id: 31518
See my review of The Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life by Avery Gilbert.
The book has substantial discussions of both odor aversion in a chapter called "The Malevolence of Malodor" and eroticism in a chapter about "The Olfactory Imagination."
Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
what if the smell aversion thing is a biological function
August 14, 2008 by Anonymous, 1 year 12 weeks ago
Comment id: 31516
the pill simulates certain aspects of pregnancy to the woman's body, no?
Perhaps being attracted to similar smells while pregnant or post-pregnancy is actually an intentional mechanism that ensures women don't reject their offspring.. ?
did the study control for this with pregnant women or women who had recently given birth?
Another thought
August 13, 2008 by Anonymous, 1 year 12 weeks ago
Comment id: 31513
Maybe this ties into the increase in divorce rates over the last 30-40 years? Woman use the pill to snatch a guy, but then when they go off it to get pregnant, find out they maybe don't really like the guy that much?
Lot of implications here.
Similar experience
August 13, 2008 by Anonymous, 1 year 12 weeks ago
Comment id: 31509
I lived a similar experience recently. I dated a girl for 2 years while she was taking the pill. When she stopped taking it, her sexual attraction towards me literally stopped inside a week and seriously hurt the relationship and we broke up.
I always suspected that the pill might have something to do with it and that's one clue that maybe it did.
Very interesting!
August 13, 2008 by Anonymous, 1 year 12 weeks ago
Comment id: 31507
Back in the early '80's I met my to-be wife and we hit it off almost immediately. We moved in together a short 2 months after our first date, got engaged 3 months later and married 4 months after that. We were having a great time together.
Then 2 months after the marriage was consummated, she told me that she was going to stop taking the pill because it was causing her problems. Boom. Just like that.
And that was the beginning of the end. While we stayed together for another 2 1/2 years before finally separating, we seemed to draw further and further apart as time (post-pill) progressed.
Was it simply that I didn't like wearing a condom or the fact that she was taking the pill during our courtship that governed our mutual attraction? Hmmmm.
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