The Most Attractive Smell for Love

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The partner’s attractive smell is important for love feelings. How much, and what is the most attractive smell for love? People are primarily visual and auditory mammals. However, even human love involves more than just visual and auditory admiration for a partner. Yet, as many know, looks and voice are very important to making a good impression on a loved one. But it is not everything.

Beauty can be found not only in the eye of the beholder but also in the nose of the beholder.

The function of smell is underappreciated in romantic love and other human affairs. The impressions coming from other senses, such as smell, also play roles in love and close relationships. Some laypeople and researchers can pretend that smell is not what makes us love another person. Olfaction is not a primary sense of communication between partners, yet it may still affect romantic relationships. The smell of each other can also be attractive or unattractive. This is why men and women widely use deodorants and perfumes to impress others (e.g., Roberts et al., 2011).

Love gradually progresses through more physically intimate relations, which engage body contact, physical affection, holding hands, touching shoulders, hugging, cuddling, caressing, kissing on the lips and face, and sexual intercourse. Then the olfactory senses begin to play an increasingly bigger role.

The Smell of Sex

For many lovers, sexual emotions are related to olfactory and gustatory sensory images (Shaw, 2008; Vroon et al., 1997). Body odors play a role in passionate sexual attraction (Cupchik et al. 2005; Pazzaglia 2015; Singh & Bronstad 2001). Besides natural body smells, perfumes and odorants boost the sexual attractiveness of a partner (Baron 1981; Mogilina et al. 2013).

For men, the body scents of their partners trigger their sexual interest and arousal. For men, olfactory and visual sensory sensations are equally important (Herz & Cahill 1997). And for women, the effect of the body scents of their partners is even stronger (Herz & Cahill 1997; Regan & Berscheid 1995). For women, the olfactory senses are the most influential (Herz & Cahill 1997).

Love Pheromones

Men and women naturally produce pheromones, the chemical substances that determine our body odor. The pheromones can regulate people’s emotions and moods. Their smell affects our sexual attraction and love. They stimulate sexual arousal, lust, and passionate feelings (e.g., Gower & Ruperelia, 1993; Grammer et al., 2005; Patzer, 1985; Pazzaglia, 2015). Even a whiff of another person’s body odor can trigger our desire and yearning. Pheromone attraction can cause other feelings of love.

In agreement with the theory of sexual selection, body odors can serve as signals of mate value. For men and women, olfaction may indicate the mates whose genes provide more variety for their offspring (e.g., Wedekind & Füri, 1997; Wedekind, Seebeck, Bettens, & Paepke, 1995). Compatible partners would say, “I like the taste of her kiss!”

Attractive Odors in Love

Smells of love are controlled not only by pheromones but also by other odors of our body and mouth, such as their freshness and perfumes. These odors play an affective and sexual role in close relationships (Cupchik, Phillips, & Truong, 2005). According to several studies, the body scents of others affect men’s and women’s sexual interest, especially among women (Herz & Cahill, 1997; Regan & Berscheid, 1995). A pleasant odor facilitates interpersonal attraction, whereas an unpleasant odor lessens it. The natural smell can be pleasant and attractive. However, artificial odorants essentially alter men’s preferences, boosting the attractiveness of female smells. (Pierce, Cohen, & Ulrich, 2004; Sodavari et al., 2014; see for a review, Karandashev et al., 2016, 2020).

Smells can be unpleasant or even repulsive to a partner. The smell from a partner’s mouth in the morning before brushing teeth is an example. Some may like the smell of smoking a cigarette, yet in my student days, there was a saying:

“Kissing partners after they smoke reminds me of the taste of an ashtray.”

The Smell of Love  

As for the olfactory modality, the smell of the partner’s skin and breath, the taste of their lips, and the scent of their perfume or cologne—all these senses contribute to the olfactory feelings of attraction.

It was found that pleasant odors strengthen romantic attraction, while unpleasant odors decrease it. In the presence of a noxious scent, lovers see another person as less attractive, while in the presence of a pleasant scent, they see someone as more attractive. It should be noted that an unpleasant odor diminishes love attraction more than a pleasant odor boosts it (Pierce et al., 2004; Sodavari et al., 2014). Therefore, we can see that the absence of the bad smell of a partner is more essential than the presence of a good one.

The feeling of gustation is closely intertwined with olfaction (Pinel, 1997). Many metaphoric love words use the sense of taste (e.g., “sweetie” and “honey”). Studies have shown that feelings of taste influence love attraction (Saegert et al., 1983; Ren et al., 2015). For example, the sweet taste of food boosts dopamine levels and feelings of passionate love (Hajnal et al., 2004; Fisher et al., 2005; Ren et al., 2015).

Researchers demonstrated that body odors are associated with other qualities of appearance. For example, the sexy body odors of women strongly correlate with their facial attractiveness, while the bad body odors of men correlate with their body asymmetry (Rikowski & Grammer, 1999). Another interesting finding is that the mere exposure effect, which I talked about in another post, also works with olfactory stimuli (e.g., Delplanque et al., 2015; Montoya et al., 2017). This means “the more we smell, the more we like,” unless an initial olfactory aversion occurs.

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