Testosterone And Body Odor May Quietly Influence How People Perceive The Social Status Of Men

Sniffing another being’s armpit to judge their social status might seem like an animalistic activity that's beneath modern humans, who tend to prefer to rely on fancy clothes and job titles to express their worth. But body odor may actually play a significant role in how men are perceived, especially in terms of dominance, according to a new study.

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The cue may have something to do with testosterone, the hormone associated with muscle mass, bone density, and body hair. It’s the primary sex hormone in males, but females produce small amounts too. 

In the new study, scientists collected sweaty T-shirts from 74 men with an average age of 22 years old. These subjects also gave saliva samples so the researchers could gauge their testosterone levels.

The dirty laundry was then passed onto 797 smellers, a mixture of males and females, who were asked to rate the scents for perceived dominance (linked to controlling or aggressive traits) and prestige (linked to respect and admiration).

“This study examines the role of body odour in people’s perceptions of others’ social status. We examined whether scent cues associated with levels of circulating testosterone impact people’s social status judgments,” Marlise Hofer, lead study author and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Victoria, said in a statement.

“Although we often think of sight and sound as our main social senses, smell also appears to carry subtle but meaningful information about others,” she added.

In sum, the shirts from men with higher testosterone were consistently rated as smelling more dominant. However, there was no connection between testosterone and perceived prestige.

“We found that both male and female participants in our study perceived men with higher levels of testosterone to be more dominant than men with lower testosterone levels," Hofer explained. 

“This relationship remained significant, after controlling for potential confounding factors,” said Hofer. “These include scent positivity, scent intensity, scent donor’s ethnicity, self-ratings of dominance, and smeller’s sex.” 

Smellers were also asked to rank the worn shirts in terms of intensity, pleasantness, and sexiness, all three of which were bunched together in the results as scent positivity. Interestingly, there was no link between positivity and higher testosterone. In other words, testosterone didn’t appear to affect whether people thought the odor was pleasant, sexy, or attractive.

A bunch of evidence hints that smells can act as a social signal in humans – especially in the world of sex. As just two examples, a couple of previous studies have shown how the smell of women’s tears can reduce sexual arousal and aggression in men.

These kinds of discoveries have raised the question of whether humans have pheromones, chemical messages released by an organism that trigger a social response. Most scientists argue that, strictly speaking, humans don’t have true pheromones, although it’s clear that our behavior is led by our nose more than we often realize.

The study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.