Relationships, biological?

I wondered if there was a connection to relationships on anatomical/biological perspective, and by golly I found a plethora of studies and research! Specifically from one research paper that touched on all aspects of the area.


It all seems start with our noses, that is, our sense of smell. Humans have a poor sense of smell in comparison to other mammals. For example, dogs have about 230 million “smelling” receptors, while humans only have about 10 million. The item that separates us from our other “heightened-abilitied smelling mammals” is our cognitive ability, the capability we have to discern (consciously and unconsciously) the smells that enter our smeller – nose.
So what is it that we smell? Pheromones are the answer for the day! “Pheromone” is a term derived from Greek words “pherein”, which means to carry and “hormone”, which means to excite. As previously mentioned, the difference between us and our mammalian counterparts is the ability for us to process this smell consciously and unconsciously:

“The ‘affective primacy hypothesis' [5] asserts that positive and negative affective reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input and virtually no cognitive processing. Olfactory signals seem to induce emotional reactions whether or not a chemical stimulus is consciously perceived."

What this says is that something is triggered or happens in us consciously or unconsciously that affects our emotions. Whew! That’s a lot to ponder! This affect just happens to affect our social behavior with the opposite sex and even produces other chemicals in our bodies that affect reproduction. And you know what? The smell does not even register to us sometimes!
I have found research that I could eat up all of blog space so I will stop here for now and delve more into the details of pheromones and its affect on us humans, relative to relationships in the next post.


Ending Thoughts
As I have stated in the beginning of my blog, I am an observer. Never have I known about pheromones and the part it might play in relationships. I always assumed it was based on visual and the right personality, not saying they are not, but I find it interesting to learn this piece of information about the extra—biological/anatomical aspects. What do you think?