No I don’t. I use my nose, just like everyone else.

Budda-boom.

Perfumers and associated industries spend an incredible amount of money producing various scents for our use. Deodorants mask the caucasian from smelling like goats for example. And I’m not kidding about the goat smell, either.

Some people appreciate that there’s only one scent/perfume/olfactory mask they can wear and all others make their scent foul. I’m one of those lucky ones. I can only wear musk based scents. Wear any others and I quickly clear rooms.

Ah, the joys of individual body chemistries.

And that brings us directly to this post’s topic; how do you pick a scent that will be pleasing both to you and to those you want to please?
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There’s evidence that people who drink regularly are more prone to risk-taking behavior.

No surprise, correct? You drink, you get behind the wheel of a car, that’s a risk. Things like that, right?

True and that’s not what I’m writing about. It seems that people who drink — especially people who started drinking young — are more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviors, period. They don’t need to be sipping right now to take risks right now, it’s that if they regularly drink they regularly take risks regardless of their state of inebriation.

This kind of surprises me.
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I’m just betting that title will get traffic. Let me explain what I mean; this post will be about women with strong personalities. Males have various terms for such women.

No, that’s not correct, either. Let me have another go at this. I mean, my wife has a strong personality and is not dangerous, dominant, domineering or any other negative term that some males might apply to her.

Ah…how about women lacking good personal boundaries who demonstrate their lack of good personal boundaries via aggressive or unnecessarily assertive behavior.

Yeah, that’s better. But I’d never get any readers with a title like Women Lacking Good Personal Boundaries Who Demonstrate Their Lack of Good Personal Boundaries via Aggressive Or Unnecessarily Assertive Behavior, don’t you think? And look for a fitting image for this topic on Google? Forget it!

So what about such women?

Well, friends, they’re dangerous.
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It seems there’s an interesting correlation between family size and longevity of relationships. I haven’t read on this in detail so I’m not prepared to comment in detail, and it seems that people who become long-term, long lasting partners come from larger families of origin.

In one way, this makes sense. Someone coming from a family that stays together long enough to produce several offspring is being given a model of relational longevity.

But there’s so much data contrary to that (mostly cultural) that it’s a hard one for me to accept.

The core of this research is that people raised in larger families acquire more social skills, more interpersonal skills, more communication skills, … basically they get more aculturation and societalization so they’re better able to cope with the normal life stresses and strains that occur in partnering situations.

That completely makes sense.

It especially makes sense if you do a pancultural study. Take into account societies around the world, first through fourth world and it makes more and more sense. Isolate the study to just the US and I think (this is a guess, I haven’t studied this in detail) it fails.

Still, it is an interesting data point for people wondering if their current special someone is going to be a good long-term, possibly life-time special someone; ask to meet their family.

Do you find yourself walking into a tribal meeting? Are there a choir of voices around the kitchen table or in the living room? Are there so many people that you can’t help bumping into each other and when you do is there laughter or territorial displays?

You never know. It could make a difference down the road.

You can follow me and my research on Twitter. I don’t twit often but when I do, it’s with gusto!

Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It’s a whoppin’ good read.

Traditionally, more men vote republican than women do. Traditionally, men don’t ask for directions while women will and traditionally, women appreciate rhymes more often than men do.

Traditionally?

This is one of those wonderful times when scientific disciplines silo to their detriment. We know from brain imaging studies what parts of the brain “get hot” when people think politics. We also know from sociology and social pyschology that women have different motivators from men.

It’s only been in the past few years that sciences such as neuroeconomics, neuromechanics and neuromathematics are attempting to bridge disciplines. But then they forget to study history and everything falls apart.
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Long, long ago (I was in 6th grade) I went to a YMCA dance with some friends. Kids from all over my home town went and most of us tended to hang out with the kids from our own schools.

I still remember one boy I didn’t know who wanted to dance with Linda Greenstreet. Phil Llewellyn was dancing with her. This other boy pushed Phil (who was a big, strong but gentle lad) away from Linda. He didn’t ask if he could cut in, he pushed Phil hard then put his fists up.

Naturally, all of Phil’s friends circled this intruder. Linda and a bunch of the other girls from my school huddled together and talked (no idea what they said). Linda said out loud that it was okay, she’d dance with this newcomer.

His dance, more than anything else, is what causes me to remember this incident. Even in 8th grade I recognized it as a territorial display. I didn’t know the term but knew the dance — a large step with hands up not quite in fists, a facial grimace with eyes wide open and watching all the other males in our group, and an almost perfect square with Linda essentially dancing by herself at its center — was a demonstration of male dominance and possession. Years later, remembering his steps and posture, I was saddened to think of what his family life must have been like.

In any case, after that dance was over the girls from my school and several others mysteriously disappeared. I did find out that while Linda danced the other girls called parents to come get them.

This one fellow through his efforts alone closed the dance down.

Interestingly enough, research now has social models of the hyperaggressive male and sure enough, one overly aggressive male zeroes out the dating possibilities for all of us. Females avoid all males, not just the hyperaggressive one, because they know the most likely outcome of such encounters is that everyone gets harmed.

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How much time do you spend listening to the other half of the species Homo? Let me ask this a bit differently…Guys, how much time do you spend listening to, paying attention to, women talking to themselves, to each other, to other males and to you? Ladies, … well I don’t need to ask this question because studies show that women pay a lot more attention to male chatter than the reverse.

This is not surprising for so many reasons, many cultural, many anthropological, many evolutionary and all of them survival based.

And those reasons are pretty much the same reasons men (generally speaking) don’t spend a lot of time listening to women.
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Research going back to 2003 indicates that women are attracted to men based on the size of their…
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If you’ve following my last few posts you know I’ve been studying how sounds affect people. This is known as psychophysics and more directly, psycho-acoustics. It’s fascinating stuff.

For example, did you know that the parts of the brain that respond to music are involved in the response mechanisms to addictive substances and behaviors? The evidence for this comes from various brain-scanning technologies (PET, fMRI, etc) and targeted drug therapies.

And it gets a little better, too. Not only abuse drugs, but it seems these neuronal circuits also are involved in our enjoyment of food and sex.

Food, sex, music and drugs.

Reminds me of Yasgur’s Farm.

Seriously, there’s a reason responses to food, sex, abuse drugs and music all occur in similar brain areas.
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I’ve written a few times (see links at the end of this post) about how sound affects relationships, specifically the sounds are partners and possible partners make and how our conscious and non-conscious responses to those sounds make and break relationships.

The latest piece of research I’ll share is (to me) a logical outcome of what we’ve studied previously; partners who sing together — what’s called duetting — tend to have stronger relationships than partners who only talk to each other.

Remember, talking is extremely important. It’s just that couples who duet — not professionally, not in front of audiences, simply when they’re together and it doesn’t matter if it’s in private or public — tend to bond at much deeper levels than their less vocal peers.

The reason duetting adds to relationship bonds is because (as noted previously) it engages different parts of the brain, more primitive parts of the brain (from an evolutionary perspective, that is).
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