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Presentation: Pheromones

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  • Presentation: Pheromones

The following presentation supports the study of pheromones.

You are not expected to learn all of the material in this presentation.  When using this study for revision, remember to:

  • Focus on key concepts
  • Learn 2 - 3 studies that you feel you understand.  You may also, instead, learn studies from the textbook or from your teacher.
  • Focus on key evaluation points

Arguments for pheromones

  • Other mammals have them.
  • We also secrete scents like other mammals.
  • There is some evidence that babies respond to pheromones in order to find their mother's breast and engage in rooting behaviour. See the study by Doucet (2009) in the textbook.

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Arguments against pheromones

  • Generalizations from animal research have not proven to be valid.
  • Human mating behaviour is influenced by cognitive and sociocultural factors - including learned experience and social norms.
  • Studies on pheromones have often not been replicated.
  • Smells are not necessarily pheromones.  There is often a problem of construct validity in research on pheromones.
  • Research also tends to have small sample sizes.
  • There is an inability to eliminate the effect of other variables that may influence human scent - eg. bacteria and diet.
  • Humans do not appear to have a functional VNO which other animals use to detect pheromones.
  • The human process of scent detection is very complex and is difficult to study.
  • The human scent is complex and made up of many different molecules.  No one has yet mapped all of those molecules.

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