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A strange dating trend suggests that men should skip the shower and let their “pheromones” do the work. The advice is questionable. But the science of scent and attraction turns out to be surprisingly fascinating.
Somewhere along the way, dating apparently became so complicated that taking a shower before meeting someone is now controversial.
A recent social-media trend sometimes called “pheromone maxxing” encourages men to avoid showering, deodorant and fragrances before a date.
The theory is that washing removes natural pheromones that might otherwise make a man irresistible.
There is just one difficulty.
Scientists haven't actually established that humans possess the kind of sexual pheromones the theory requires.
So, gentlemen, you may want to keep the soap.
But before dismissing the whole thing as another peculiar internet trend, there is a surprise.
Smell really does appear to play a role in human attraction.
And the science behind it is considerably more interesting than the TikTok version.
First, We Really Do Smell Each Other
Humans sometimes behave as though smell is one of our less important senses.
Compared with dogs, we certainly don't appear to spend much of the day deliberately sniffing other people.
But our noses may be gathering more social information than we realize.
Research increasingly suggests that human body odor can communicate information between people, including information associated with emotional states. A systematic review found evidence that body odors produced under emotional conditions can influence perception and behavior in other people, although researchers are still trying to identify precisely which chemicals are involved.
A meta-analysis involving 26 studies and 1,652 participants found a small-to-moderate overall effect for communication of fear, stress and anxiety through body odor.
Other experiments have even suggested that body odor collected from people experiencing happiness can produce measurable responses in people smelling it.
We are not consciously thinking:
That gentleman smells slightly anxious.
Much of this research concerns responses occurring without conscious identification of the odor's meaning.
Our sense of smell may therefore be participating quietly in social life without receiving much credit for it.
And Smell May Matter to Attraction
One intriguing study asked 198 heterosexual university students about the characteristics that mattered when choosing a potential partner.
Women rated body odor as more important for attraction than physical appearance and most of the social characteristics researchers examined.
For both men and women, liking someone's natural body odor was particularly associated with sexual interest.
That doesn't mean smell secretly determines whom we fall in love with.
Attraction involves appearance, personality, voice, behavior, familiarity, culture, circumstances and probably dozens of factors we haven't adequately measured.
But smell doesn't appear to be irrelevant.
Which brings us to one of the most famous experiments in the science of attraction.
The Sweaty T-Shirt Experiment
It sounds less like a scientific study than something devised during a particularly adventurous university party.
In 1995, Swiss zoologist Claus Wedekind and colleagues asked male participants to wear T-shirts so that researchers could collect their natural body odors.
Women were subsequently asked to smell the shirts.
The researchers were interested in a group of genes known as the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC, which plays an important role in immune-system function.
Women tended to rate odors from men whose MHC profiles were different from their own as more pleasant.
Curiously, the pattern appeared reversed among women taking oral contraceptives.
An intriguing hypothesis followed.
Could humans somehow use smell to detect genetically different immune systems when choosing partners?
From an evolutionary perspective, researchers proposed that greater MHC diversity in offspring might potentially provide advantages in immune defense.
It was an irresistible idea.
Perhaps chemistry between two people really was, at least partly, chemistry.
Unfortunately, Science Had More Questions
This is where an interesting scientific result gradually became a much stronger popular story.
Subsequent studies produced mixed findings.
A major review and meta-analysis published by the Royal Society examined the evidence connecting MHC, odor preferences and human mate choice.
The researchers found no significant overall evidence that MHC similarity influenced actual mate selection. Nor did the combined evidence establish a significant overall association between MHC similarity and odor preferences.
That doesn't prove that our immune-system genes have nothing whatsoever to do with scent or attraction.
It means something more mundane but scientifically important:
the evidence isn't strong enough to support the popular claim.
The sweaty T-shirt experiment remains fascinating.
It just isn't a license to construct an entire theory of human romance around laundry.
So What About Pheromones?
This is where language becomes important.
Pheromones are chemical signals released by one member of a species that produce particular responses in other members of that species.
They are well established in many animals.
Humans undoubtedly emit an extraordinary mixture of chemicals.
But demonstrating that a substance comes from the human body is not the same as demonstrating that it is a human pheromone.
Several molecules—including androstadienone, found predominantly in male secretions—have been repeatedly described as possible human sex pheromones.
Oxford zoologist Tristram Wyatt reviewed the evidence and argued that there was no robust evidence establishing the commonly proposed steroid compounds as human pheromones.
A later Royal Society review of reproducibility in human chemical communication was similarly skeptical, warning that numerous studies involved subtle effects and relatively small samples, conditions under which false-positive findings can become a serious problem.
And a comprehensive review published in Physiology & Behavior in 2025 reached a cautious conclusion about androstadienone specifically: studies have reported physiological, cognitive and behavioral effects, but inconsistent findings and methodological differences mean that calling it a human sex pheromone remains inconclusive.
So human chemical communication?
Quite possibly.
A scientifically established human sex pheromone that men should cultivate before Saturday night's dinner reservation?
Not yet.
But I Really Do Love the Way My Partner Smells
Now things become more romantic.
Researchers asked partnered women to smell shirts containing their partner's body odor alongside odors from unfamiliar men.
The women could reliably recognize their partner's scent.
They also rated the odor of a known man as more familiar and sexier than odors from unfamiliar men.
But there was a lovely complication.
They did not reliably rank their partner as the best-smelling man among all the samples.
The researchers concluded that some preference for a partner's smell might develop through repeated exposure and familiarity rather than being evidence that scent originally caused the attraction.
In other words, perhaps we don't only choose people because we like their smell.
Perhaps we also learn to love their smell because we love them.
That is arguably more interesting.
The Scent of Someone You Love
Other experiments suggest that a partner's smell can become psychologically meaningful.
In one study, women exposed to their romantic partner's scent before and during a stressful laboratory task reported lower perceived stress than women exposed to a stranger's scent.
Another small experiment found that a partner's body odor reduced subjective discomfort during a stressful experience, particularly among people with more secure attachment patterns.
The evidence is not completely consistent. A newer experiment involving 179 participants found no reduction in cortisol from exposure to a partner's odor and, unexpectedly, found increased subjective stress and heart rate under certain experimental conditions.
That's science doing what science is supposed to do.
Interesting findings create hypotheses.
New experiments test them.
And occasionally the answer becomes more complicated rather than less.
And Before You Throw Away the Perfume...
Fragrance doesn't necessarily obliterate someone's natural scent either.
Researchers have found that perfume and body odor can interact to produce an individual odor mixture.
In one series of experiments, mixtures containing people's personally chosen fragrances were rated as more pleasant than mixtures created using randomly assigned fragrances.
The researchers suggested that people may, consciously or otherwise, select fragrances that work particularly well with their own body odor.
Another experiment found that people could still distinguish individuals by smell when they were wearing fragrances, although discrimination was easier without fragrance.
So perhaps your favorite perfume isn't simply covering up “the real you.”
It may be combining with you.
Which Brings Us Back to the Shower
There is a kernel of legitimate science hiding inside the pheromone-maxxing trend.
Humans have individual body odors.
We can recognize familiar people through scent.
Body odor may contribute to attraction.
Our odors can carry information about emotional and physiological states.
And researchers are seriously investigating chemical communication between humans.
What the research doesn't establish is that allowing several additional days of sweat to accumulate makes a man more sexually attractive.
Nor does evidence that humans communicate information through scent establish the existence of a magical chemical aphrodisiac.
The internet has taken an intriguing scientific question and performed its traditional transformation:
“Scientists are investigating this”
has somehow become
“Don't shower before your date.”
Those are not quite the same thing.
Lydia's™ Take
Perhaps there really is something mysterious about the way another person smells.
Anyone who has buried her face in a partner's old shirt while he was away probably didn't need a laboratory to tell her that scent and affection can become intertwined.
Our noses seem capable of recognizing people, carrying memories and perhaps detecting subtle information we don't consciously understand.
There is something rather lovely about that.
Science may eventually discover much more about the chemical conversations taking place beneath our awareness.
But until then, we should probably resist turning an intriguing field of research into another set of dating rules.
Attraction is complicated.
Chemistry is real.
Pheromones remain unproven.
And if it's a first date, take the shower.
Editorial Note
“Pheromone maxxing” and related terminology are popular-culture descriptions rather than established scientific concepts. Research supports a role for human body odor in social perception and communication, but scientists have not established the commonly promoted compounds as human sex pheromones. Findings concerning MHC-related attraction, partner scent and human chemosignalling remain active areas of research, and individual studies should not be interpreted as universal rules about attraction.
Research & Trusted Sources
Wedekind et al. (1995) — The classic MHC/body-odor experiment that helped popularize the hypothesis that immune-system genetic differences could influence odor preferences. Later research has produced mixed results.
Havlí?ek et al. (2020), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B — Major review/meta-analysis examining MHC-associated odor preferences and human mate choice. It found that the overall evidence did not establish the commonly proposed MHC-dissimilarity effect on human mate selection or odor preference.
Read the Royal Society review via PubMed Central
Wyatt (2015), Proceedings of the Royal Society B — Critical review of the search for human pheromones, concluding that the steroid molecules commonly promoted as human pheromones had not been established as such through rigorous evidence.
Read the human pheromone review on PubMed
Han et al. (2025), Physiology & Behavior — Contemporary review of androstadienone research. The authors conclude that classifying it as a human male sex pheromone remains inconclusive.
Read the 2025 androstadienone review on PubMed
Herz & Inzlicht (2002), Evolution and Human Behavior — Study of 198 heterosexual university students examining sensory and social characteristics involved in attraction. Women placed particularly high importance on body odor.
Read the study abstract at ScienceDirect
Mahmut & Croy (2019), Physiology & Behavior — Review examining the potential roles of body odor and olfactory ability in the initiation, maintenance and breakdown of romantic relationships.
Read the romantic relationships and body odor review on PubMed
Mahmut et al. (2019), Physiology & Behavior — Experimental research finding that women could recognize a known man's odor and rated it as more familiar and sexy than unfamiliar men's odors, although their known donor was not reliably their most preferred odor.
Read the partner body-odor study on PubMed
Calvi et al. (2020), Brain and Behavior — Systematic review of research into chemical communication of emotions through body odor.
Read the systematic review via PubMed Central
de Groot & Smeets (2017) — Meta-analysis of 26 studies involving 1,652 participants investigating communication of fear, stress and anxiety through body odor.
Read the meta-analysis on PubMed
Lenochová et al. (2012), PLOS ONE — Experimental work showing that fragrance interacts with an individual's natural body odor and that personally selected fragrances can produce more pleasant mixtures than randomly assigned fragrances.