The Effect of Human Pheromones on an Observer's Perception of Beauty and Success

Overview

The researcher believes that if humans are exposed to human attractant pheromones, they will rate people as more attractive and believe each person is more successful. The experiment includes creating four groups (pheromones and non-pheromone), and dividing them into eight sections overall. For the experiment 60 people will be surveyed in total from each of the different maturity levels, pre-puberty, puberty, and post-puberty. They will be asked to rate photos from various groups on whether or not the people are perceived to be happy, attractive, educated, and their salary. Each test was designed to see if human attractant pheromones affect humans and if there is any correlation between maturity. The control group was the two groups that had photos in which no pheromones were sprayed on them. All data was recorded and analyzed qualitatively. For the statistical analysis a one-tail t tests comparing comparing each maturity level with and without pheromones was completed and a two-way ANOVA, which compares variance of all the groups. In conclusion the human attractant pheromones did have a significant effect on perceived beauty, happiness, success as well as maturity. However, the interaction between pheromones and maturity has no significant effect on perceived beauty, happiness, success. The hypothesis was partially correct in which pheromones did have an effect on the participants in the maturity level of puberty. For further studies, the researcher would like to expand on the amount of data recorded by adding more age groups and including parameters in which the surveyors have to rate the photographs.

Competition history

• ISEF 2016 Computational Biology and Bioinformatics · Entry BEHA004

Resources

• ISEF abstract page ↗

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