Mate choice human

Kelly, S. Dunbar, R.I.M. (2000) Who dares, wins - Heroism versus altruism in women s mate choice. Human Nature-An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective. 12 (2) 89-105... 

Pheromones play roles such as the time-tested topics menstrual synchrony and mother-infant olfactory communication, as well as the more controversial topics of the role of pheromones in human mate choice and the existence or non-existence of a vomeronasal organ in humans and Old World primates, Especially fascinating is a table published by Wyatt [8] detailing odours associated with various human illnesses (i.e. patients with gout or schizophrenia have differing, distinct odours to their sweat), and another table listing various commercial products, both past and present, that contain pheromones. 

In some mate choice studies, urine is presented in place of the whole animal in order to demonstrate that odours are, or can be, mediators of disassortative mating (e.g. Ninomiya and Brown, 1995 Ehman and Scott, 2001). In the absence of more direct measures, such as asking human subjects which odour they prefer (e.g. Wedekind et al., 1995), the duration of investigation or time spent near an odour are generally assumed to equate directly to preference. This can be misleading when the assumption is not explicitly tested. For instance, female voles have been shown to exhibit an odour preference for unparasitized males which does not correlate with mate selection (Klein et al., 1999). 

Although the mechanism for HLA-based mate choice in humans is not known, MHC-based mate choice preferences in rodents are olfactory mediated (reviewed in Alberts Ober, 1993). In humans, evidence for MHC-based olfactory recognition has recently been presented by Wedekind and colleagues (Wedekind et. al., 1995, 1997). Despite the methodological limitations of these studies (Hedrick and Loeschcke, 1996), the results are consistent with the data from rodent studies and suggest that humans may indeed use olfactory cues to discriminate between persons similar and dissimilar in the MHC. This premise has been bolstered recently by the identification of a family of olfactory receptor genes (OLF) that map within the human MHC (Fan et al., 1996), but additional studies are needed to determine whether preferences for mates with dissimilar HLA haplotypes in the Hutterites are indeed mediated by olfactory cues. 

Recent research has shown that among humans MHC type plays a role in the selection of heterosexual mates. Studies on the North American Hutterite community (a reproductively isolated, cultural and religious group of Austrian ancestry) revealed that mate choice was influenced by an avoidance of spouses with a high degree of haplotype overlap with self (Ober, this volume). In another study, Wedekind, Seebeck, Bettens and Paepke (1995), typed female and male students for their MHC haplotypes. Each male subject wore a T-shirt for two consecutive nights, after which the T-shirts were collected and placed in identical cardboard boxes for the female subjects to sniff and evaluate. For each female, half of the boxes contained T-shirts from men who were similar to her in MHC-type, and half contained T-shirts from men who were dissimilar. The results revealed that females who were not on birth control pills preferred the smell of males who were most dissimilar from them in MHC-type, indicating that female preferences for male body odor correlates with MHC dissimilarity. These women also reported that the body odor of the males they preferred reminded them of their current and/or ex-mates. Thus, as with rodents, human mate selection appears to be related to female preferences for male body odors that correlate with MHC dissimilarity (complementarity). 

Lykken DT, Tellegen A 1993 Is human mating adventitious or the result of lawful choice A twin study of mate selection. J Pers Soc Psychol 65 56-68... 

The reason for such stress in homo sapiens is the conflict between the upper and lower brains. The lower brain is that of an animal, witfi die same drives and desires for quick action towards gratification as that of any dog. A dog will fight or nm, mate, eat, defecate, as die situation presents itself with little iparent inhibition. He has no upper brain widi its intricate pragram-ming of rules, regulations, choices, responsibilities or taboos and the endless dos and don ts which makes die human stand and take it and be glad and prosper. 

Choice of the sample from the samphng frame is well covered in sociology texts. Within human factors it typically arises in the context of survey design (Sinclair 1990). To mate statistical inferences from the sample to the population (specifically to the sampling frame), our sampling procedure must allow the laws of probability to be applied. The most often-used sampling methods are ... 

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