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Penn State Professor: Ideologically Similar People Could be Attracted Because of Their…Smells

This oughta fill up your weird news quota for the day: Penn State political science professor Peter Hatemi, along with researchers from Harvard and Brown, theorized that liberals and conservatives could be attracted to other liberals and conservatives because of their distinct smells.

Their article, “Assortative Mating on Ideology Could Operate Through Olfactory Cues,” cited by the Washington Post, seeks to explain why liberals so often match with liberals in long-term relationships and vice versa. The article said people on either side of the ideological aisle have smells that also signal other functions, like defense against outgroups and social cohesion. That, in turn, is related to ideology.

Here are the excerpts pulled by the Post:

[According to the researchers,]  greater disgust sensitivity, which is intimately interconnected with the neural substrates of smell, predicts more conservative positions, particularly around issues involving morality and sexual reproduction. These underlying, physically experienced predilections can come to be expressed as opinions on such topics as abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, and a host of other ideological topics.

If social attitudes are linked to odor [..] then one mechanism that odor preferences transfer from parents to children may operate through their mother’s choice of mate. In this way, social processes may drive some of the pathways by which individuals come to prefer those whose ideological “smell” matches their own.

Hatemi and his fellow researchers asked a group to rate the smells of other people, and those who shared the same ideology approved of the others’ smells more often. The researchers did note that the finding was only barely statistically significant, so it shouldn’t be taken as fact. But if you’re a lonely ideologue, maybe keep your nose open some more?

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About the Author

Tim Gilbert

Former Managing Editor of this site, now just makes lots of #content for it from the Phyrst’s Table 69. Senior from Philadelphia. First-generation Penn Stater. I might go to law school after this, but I might not, too. “For the Glory” is in my email signature because I’m a douche. [email protected] is my email if you want to tell me why I suck. Alternatively, you can call me out on Twitter @OlGilb.

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