Smelly T-Shirt Study

Researcher

Wedekind

Design Type

Quasi-exp

Topic

Pheromones, evolutionary attraction/explanation

Aim

To determine whether one's MHC would affect mate choice

Sample

49 females and 44 males from the uni of Bern, Switzerland

Procedure

1. Ps "typed" for MHC 2. men wore t-shirts for 2 nights and used no deodorant, no perfume, smell-free detergent, no soap, and avoided: spicy food, tobacco, alcohol, and sex. 3. Women smelled and ranked 7 t-shirts, some w/ same MHC and some w/ different MHC. 4. ranked intensity + pleasantness/sexiness on a scale of 1-10.

Findings

-Women scored t-shirts with different MHC as more pleasant

- but women on birth control prefer the smell of the same mhc

Strengths

-Replicable

-Pretty high level of control (high internal validity)

-Double blind procedure (neither the ps nor the researchers knew the MCH of ps)

Limitations

-Low construct validity

-demand characteristics

-WEIRD

-low eco val

-only female perspective, gender bias