Repeatability of odour preferences across time

摘要: Human body odour is often associated with negative attributions, hence the term ‘malodour’. Another perspective that odours contain biologically meaningful information involved in communication of social cues, notably perception suitable mates. This evolutionarily informed indicates we retain capacity to infer mate quality through olfaction (e.g. preferring high-quality or genetically compatible individuals). From either perspective, knowing extent which stable over time important: order fully understand how perfumes might interact whether biological cues gained from are reliable. In addition, second odour-based preferences should also be relatively time, especially if both traits and influenced. Here measured repeatability young women for male odours, a 3-month period. We compare stability faces fragrances. find all stimuli were highly repeatable time. Since used repeated samples same set men, constancy individuals Our results on preference have implications perfume industry lend weight assumption constitutes cue can individual assessment during human interactions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.