At the level of rationality, the commercial world strives to present situations and products as drivers of erotic encounters. In other words, the common wisdom is that ‘sex sells.’ This study using the science of Mind Genomics identifies the contribution of four factors to the probability of an erotic encounter. These are foods, fragrances, situations, and people. Mind Genomics identifies these contributions by creating vignettes, comprising described combinations of different foods, fragrances, situations and people, obtaining the rating (likelihood of an erotic encounter based upon the vignette), and then deconstructs the rating into the part-worth contributions of the elements. By working with a variety of alternative foods, fragrances, etc. it becomes possible to understand how the description of ecologically-relevant chemosensory stimuli drive expected eroticism. The approach further identifies the potentially synergistic combinations foods or fragrances with situations and people, respectively. Furthermore, the approach shows relevant group differences (e.g., by gender, by age, by country), as well as the existence of new-to-the-world mind-sets, virtually ‘mental alleles’ with respect to the ‘sexuality’ of foods, fragrances, people, and situations. The paper shows the approach, and the straightforward scalability across different stimuli, and different cultures.

Mind of sexual chemistry: How foods, fragrances, situations, and people drive the expectation of erotic encounters

255th National Meeting (2018)

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