You Smell Like Liberty: Will You Marry Me?
In the current issue of the American Journal of Political Science, an article, "Assortative Mating on Ideology Could Operate Through Olfactory Clues," by researchers from Brown, Harvard, and Pennsylvania State Universities suggests that ideological tendencies have distinct scents. Moreover, people possibly follow their noses when choosing politically compatible mates. From the abstract:
Mates appear to assort on political attitudes more than any other social, behavioral, or physical trait, besides religion. Yet the process by which ideologically similar mates end up together remains ambiguous. Mates do not appear to consciously select one another based on ideology, nor does similarity result from convergence. Recently, several lines of inquiry have converged on the finding that olfactory processes have an important role in both political ideology and mate selection. Here we integrate extant studies of attraction, ideology, and olfaction and explore the possibility that assortation on political attitudes may result, in part, from greater attraction to the scent of those with shared ideology. We conduct a study in which individuals evaluated the body odor of unknown others, observing that individuals are more attracted to their ideological concomitants.
Science Daily adds:
A new study reveals that people find the smell of others with similar political opinions to be attractive, suggesting that one of the reasons why so many spouses share similar political views is because they were initially and subconsciously attracted to each other's body odor.
During the study, 146 participants rated the attractiveness of the body odor of unknown strong liberals and strong conservatives, without ever seeing the individuals whose smells they were evaluating.
"People could not predict the political ideology of others by smell if you asked them, but they differentially found the smell of those who aligned with them more attractive. So I believe smell conveys important information about long-term affinity in political ideology that becomes incorporated into a key component of subconscious attraction," said Dr. Rose McDermott, lead author of the American Journal of Political Science study.
Avoid the sour aroma of conservatism and the cloying stink of progressivism: liberty smells sweetest.