From smell to sweat and blood… the secrets behind magnetic sexual attraction
WHAT do you look for in a partner? Attractive, shared life goals and a GSOH . . .
Well it turns out you can forget a love of the same music, compatible star signs and all of the above.
Scientists have found there is far more to sexual chemistry than meets the eye.
From matching blood types to sweat patterns and even gossiping about the same people, Tanith Carey reveals some of the amazing, invisible forces behind that magnetic sexual attraction.
YOU SHARE THE SAME BLOOD TYPE
WHEN picking a partner, you are more of a vampire than you realise.
Humans have eight main blood types.
A Chinese study of nearly one million people found that you are more likely to get into a relationship and start a family if you share the same type.
People with O Negative were 18 per cent more likely than would be statistically expected, while people who are AB were 15 per cent more likely, according to researchers at the Tsinghua Institute of Economics.
Scientists leading the study say they are not yet sure why this is. But they point out that people with the same blood groups have a higher chance of possessing similar personality traits, such as anxiety and drive, as well as conditions including attention deficit disorder and this may help bring couples together.
YOU GOSSIP ABOUT THE SAME PEOPLE
DO you know someone who dislikes the same person as much as you do?
Gossiping about them helps you find each other attractive.
Researchers found that sharing negative opinions about people behind their backs is even more alluring than liking the same people, according to a study in the Journal Of Personal Relationships.
Yet scientists discovered that most couples didn’t realise this shared dislike was bringing them closer.
According to the study’s lead author psychologist, Jennifer Bosson: “Sharing negative attitudes is attractive because it makes the people who have just met feel more together in the in-group and boosts their self-esteem.”
YOU SWEAT THE SAME
IT doesn’t sound like the sexiest way to hook up.
But scientists at Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that if you sweat as much as a potential love interest in the first two minutes of meeting, you’re more likely to be attracted to one another.
Researchers used skin sensors to measure the sweating patterns of people who met during a speed dating event.
They found that couples who were romantically interested in each other had similar rates of sweating — a sign of being biologically “in tune”, according to the study in the journal Scientific Reports.
Study author Shir Atzil said: “Connection with a partner depends on how well we can synchronise our bodies.
“The study showed that within two minutes of dating, physiological synchrony predicts romantic interest.”
YOU’RE THE RIGHT HEIGHT
WHEN it comes to romance, your height — and even how leggy you are — is also factors in finding a compatible mate.
Overall, men are generally attracted to shorter women and women to taller men.
But it’s even more specific than that, according to a study from Poland’s University of Wroclaw, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Researchers found there’s even an ideal ratio — a man should be 1.09 times taller than his female partner.
So a woman of 5ft 6in would most likely be drawn to a 6ft 1in man — roughly the same relative heights of Victoria and David Beckham.
And it’s not how tall you are next to each other. It’s also how long your legs are.
According to another study in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour in 2008, both men and women prefer partners with five per cent longer legs than the average.
Scientists believe this is because it’s an unconscious signal that their partner’s bodies developed well during puberty — and so they would make healthier, fitter parents.
YOUR CERVIX GETS A VOTE
TRYING to work out if a man would make a good dad by watching how he is with babies?
It seems that your cervix — the doughnut-shaped ring of muscle at the base of your uterus and the top of your vagina — also has a say. When you have sex, your cervix produces mucus for sperm to swim in so they can get to your egg and conceive a baby.
But a study in the journal Proceedings Of the Royal Society B found that women’s cervixes make thinner mucus — which is easier to swim through — when the sperm belongs to a man who is a better genetic match.
To discover this, researchers watched how sperm from eight men swam through the mucus of a range of women during intercourse. They found the sperm from the men who had better immunity genes — and would conceive a healthier infant — were able to swim more easily.
If the sperm belonged to men who had similar genes — who would make less healthy babies — the mucus was thicker and more difficult to swim through.
YOU HAVE HUSKY VOICES
IT’S not just what you say to a potential partner that draws them to you, but the pitch that you use.
Scientists recorded chats between 30 men and women aged 20 to 40 at a speed-dating event.
When they analysed their conversations, the findings, published in the Frontiers In Psychology, found men lowered the pitch of their voices more when chatting to women they fancied, probably because having a lower voice is associated with size and dominance.
The women also talked in lower, huskier voices, to possibly indicate “sexual interest and intimacy”, according to lead author, Katarzyna Pisanski, of Sussex University.
YOU LIKE EACH OTHER’S SMELL
YOU likely love the smell of your partner, but have you ever wondered why?
Not only does sweat draw you to your partner, but their unique smell.
In one study, known as the Sweaty T-Shirt Experiment, published in the journal Proceedings Of the Royal Society B, 49 women were given T-shirts a group of men had worn for two days.
None of the men were allowed to wear any deodorants or aftershaves to cover up their real body odour.
Next the women were asked to rate how “sexy” they thought the T-shirts smelled.
It found that women were far more likely to prefer the scent of the shirts worn by men with a more different set of immune system genes compared to their own.
According to the researchers, by selecting partners who have different gene sets, there’s more chance of one parent’s DNA compensating for faulty genes in the other, making a healthier baby.