Scientists Find Tears Are the Anti-Viagra 207
An anonymous reader writes "The male test subjects didn't know what they were smelling, they were just given little vials of clear liquid and told to sniff. But when those vials contained a woman's tears (collected while she watched a sad movie), the men rated pictures of women's faces as less sexually attractive, and their saliva contained less testosterone. Is this proof that humans make and respond to pheromones? The researcher behind the study doesn't use that controversial word, but he says his findings do prove that tears contain meaningful chemical messages."
The level of discourse (Score:5, Insightful)
Geez, guys. Mental age should be at least 16, mental altitude should be at least a foot above the gutter.
Re:So how do we explain make-up sex? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the man doesn't usually control when a sexual encounter happens, the woman does. Make up sex is when the woman is either trying to induce you to stay in the relationship or is turned on because of how you responded to the argument.
Re:Pheremones? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pheremones from other species dont have noticeable scent to you. You are not rigged to recognize and response to them. To each species, their pheromones has a distincive smell that provoke a specific emotional impuse to act in some way. eg: It smell attractive.
Deodorant are not natural and are merely masking the human odor. If you think natural odor smell awful, it is only because you are not use to it. Just like puritain are scandalized over the sight of a naked body. Hygiene is important, and restraining too strong odor is also important, but demanding that everyone has the same standardized "aqua fresh" scent is wrong.
Re:Anyone who has ever dated a manipulative crier (Score:5, Insightful)
all relationships end up sexless!!
Yes, because we all die in the end. If it happens sooner then you're doing it wrong.
Re:(collected while she watched a sad movie) (Score:5, Insightful)
Males found women less attractive when in contact with the tears - not even knowing what they were.
Therefore, something in the tears makes males less likely to see an attractive woman. It doesn't say that it makes the woman crying the ONLY one less attractive.
Therefore, perhaps it is a mechanism developed by nature to stop males just finding a "hottie" so to speak while another woman was crying and instead focus as a group on what was making the woman cry?
Problem is fixed, woman stops crying and the males then pair off with the females and further the species once more?
hmmmm, this is
*sips coffee*
Re:Anyone who has ever dated a manipulative crier (Score:5, Insightful)
If the goal of the manipulation is to avoid sex. If women want sex (note to Slashdotters: they do) the crying thing would be negative feedback and would be conditioned out of their behavior.
Only if they want sex more than they want to win arguments.
LK
Re:Because (Score:3, Insightful)
careful what you wish for... wifey has a baby due in june.
Re:Women get the short end of the stick (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, you want to analyze each chemical in the tears (or at least each one that is in an abnormal concentration in sad women's tears) to see if it does, what? Oh, I know, to see if it makes men less horny. But how did you know it should make them less horny? By doing a research such as the one in TFA.
Science has many steps and levels of research. Usually you start by researching a general phenomenon and deriving a basic idea of "what the heck is happening" (i.e. sad women's tears cause men to be less sexually aroused). After that you go into smaller details and try to find what is causing said phenomenon (i.e. chemical X and/or Y cause men to be less sexually aroused). And the last step is using the sum of all the small details to make a theory that can be put to practical use (e.g. let's make product MakeWomenSafe(TM) to chemically castrate too-sexually violent men).
Not always do we have all of those steps, but it's hard to start at the gas chromatography stage before finishing the first, general step - which is also actual science.