This seems to be what is happening in these armpit smelling experiments. So at least some amount of attraction between people is happening with the nose.
But what I found even more interesting was that oral contraceptives mess with this system. Women on the pill tend to prefer the smell of men with similar immune systems. Some scientists think this is because pregnant women prefer family around them and family tends to have a similar immune system.
When I first read this I thought, “Wow, this is going to really mess up future generations’ immune systems. Maybe it even helps to explain the recent rise in allergies and autoimmune diseases.”
But then I caught myself and thought a little harder. It is probably not that likely that the recent increases in allergies and autoimmune diseases would have happened so quickly if the pill were the main culprit. And besides, there is undoubtedly more to human mate selection than smell!
We are complicated. There are all sorts of cues that cause someone to fall in love. Pheromones may play a role but they are certainly not the whole story.
For example, some studies use photos and ask women which men are the most attractive. The women in these studies tend to pick men with more similar immune systems (apparently there is some correlation between facial symmetry and the immune system).
And when scientists look at couples who actually have children together, they get mixed results. An early study pointed to Europeans having children with partners with different immune system genes. But a deeper look at that data and looking at a larger group of couples showed that this didn’t seem to be the case. Differing immune systems had little impact on who women chose to have children with.
The most that could be said was that women tended to avoid men with really similar immune systems. A bit similar was OK.
Of course we could already be seeing the effects of the pill in these studies. Maybe if the women in these studies hadn’t been on the pill when they met their partners, they might have chosen someone with a more dissimilar immune system.
Scientists need to look at people who did not meet while women were on the pill. Then we will have a better idea of how big a role your nose plays in choosing your soul mate. And how worried we should be about the pill’s effect on that selection.
Nice PBS video about the t-shirt smelling experiments.