Eau de Vagina & Eau de Homme
Author: Maia Adar
Maia Adar is an independent scientist and the founder of Cosimo Research, a scientific research service for curiosity-driven investigation. Cosimo is currently seeking participants for the Big Taping Truth Trial, a study about the efficacy of mouth taping – more info and join here.
This research can be criticized for two reasons:
The topic is weird, sexual, and maybe gross, depending on your sensitivities.
These experiments do not meet the gold standards of academia.
I can’t disagree with you on the first one – you got me there. But on the second point, please note that this research should be judged within the context of its field. These were the first attempts to put a popular trend to the test with a randomized-controlled trial. Our objective was to study something that has never been studied before, to go a level beyond anecdotal evidence and bring the scientific method to a new question.
With that being said…
What is vabbing?
Vabbing = vaginal + dabbing.
Basically, it means using one’s vaginal fluid as perfume to attract men. You simply reach in there, scoop up some of that natural lubrication, dab it onto the wrists and neck, and wait for the men to flock.
This seduction method was trending on TikTok around 2022 but it’s been around well before that. Anecdotes abound of women being showered with male attention when they put on their special perfume. “Proceed with caution — because it works,” one TikToker warned. “I swear, if you vab, you will attract people, like a date, a one-night stand or you’ll just get free drinks all night.”
Depending on your sensitivities, you may find this absolutely disgusting. Plenty of people online certainly do. I saw more videos and articles responding to how gross vabbing is than I did about people actually trying it.
But a dedicated cohort of vabbers swear by it. What if there is really something to it? It wouldn’t be that hard to improve upon these influencers’ casual n=1 experiments.
Is it possible that our bodily secretions actually send signals to others?
Do humans even have pheromones?
The existence of human pheromones is still up for debate. But basically, for now, the evidence in the scientific literature is weak.
This assessment partly depends on how you define pheromones. The fact that humans have odors which might relate to various biological functions and can affect others is well-supported (e.g. menstruation or immune function). But if we define them more specifically as messenger substances between individuals of the same species that “release a specific reaction—for example, a definite behavior or a developmental process” (Karlson and Luscher, 1959), then scientists haven’t really found anything that fits the bill.
Some research has suggested that people are more attracted to others with a differing HLA genotype from themselves (antigens that affect body odor) as a way to avoid mating with those that we are genetically related to, but these findings have not replicated (Halvicek, Winternitz, & Roberts, 2020). Two specific steroids, androstadienone and estratetraenol, were commonly suspected to signal human sexual attraction, but recent evidence does not support their validity as pheromones (Wyatt, 2020). See Wyatt’s review for an in-depth assessment of the issues with current human pheromone research.
In summary, the existence of human pheromones remains unproven.
How we tested it
We wanted our test to be representative of real life use and close to how vabbing would be actually applied. So rather than, say, exposing participants to isolated substances and having them view images of faces, we had real women hugging and conversing with real men. But we still did it in a lab setting so that we could make measurements and control for a few conditions.
The study was advertised as a “Cognitive Enhancement via Hugging Trial.” Appropriately, we held it on Valentine’s Day.
We had 20 participants (19 male and 1 female), all of whom gave their informed consent for a study involving unexpected sensory stimuli (e.g. hugging, smells, etc) which could not be disclosed.
We had two female experimenters who interacted with 10 participants each. For each experimenter, half of the interactions were without vab (control) and the second half were with vab.
In each interaction, the female experimenter stood in a marked spot in the room. The participant entered and gave her a timed, 10-second hug. Then he stepped apart and answered a series of cognitive questions which she read from a script. The whole thing took about 3 minutes.
There was a hidden ruler against the floor which we used to secretly measure the distance at which the man stood from the woman – this was the main outcome of interest, which was inspired by a study called Oxytocin Modulates Social Distance between Males and Females. We also measured the participant's heart rate before and after the hug, his responses to the cognitive questions, and his response times.
For more details about the experiment design, see “Was the study good enough?” below.
Results
Participants stood 4.4 inches closer on average to the female experimenter if she had applied the vab (p=0.1041).
This p-value means that, if it were true that the vabbing actually does nothing, there would be only a 10.41% chance of getting these results.
Heart rates increased 1.2 bpm after the 10-second hug in the control group, and increased 9.0 bpm in the vab group (p=0.0596). Even with high variability in the change in heart rate, there is a large effect and the difference has a small p-value.
Cognitive test performance and response times were not affected by vabbing, which is not particularly surprising. This doesn't necessarily mean that cognitive function is not affected by vabbing, but the effect is probably either small or nonexistent.
Although they are a useful tool, the scientific establishment overemphasizes p-values. Two alternatives are Cohen’s d (an indicator of the effect size) and Bayes Factor (quantifies the relative evidence of each hypothesis) (Halsey, 2019).
In this case, the Cohen’s d are -0.58 and 0.73 for social distance and change in heart rate respectively. These are large effect sizes! A value greater than 0.5 means that the difference between the means is greater than half a standard deviation.
On the other hand, the Bayes Factors are 1.43 and 1.97 respectively. This is not considered to be particularly strong evidence. It means that the alternative hypotheses (there is an effect) are 1.43x and 1.97x more likely than the null hypotheses (there is no effect). However, it still indicates a preference towards there being some effect.
Was the study good enough?
Sample size: We had 20 participants and 2 female experimenters. This is an improvement over the existing anecdotal social media evidence (which cannot be easily aggregated). Our sample size was enough to see interesting differences in social distance and heart rate, but a larger sample size would give more confidence in the results.
Blinding: The participants thought the experiment was about how hugging affects cognition. They didn’t know about the vabbing. They didn’t know that social distance was being measured. The female experimenters knew about the treatments since they had to apply their own vaginal fluid.
Controlling for scent: To ensure no overlap of scent, the 10 control group interactions were done first, followed by the 10 vab interactions. To ensure a sufficient dose, vabbing was reapplied between each vab interaction.
Controlling for female’s subconscious signaling: The hugs were timed to be 10 seconds. Female experimenters stood in one spot and read from a script during the whole interaction. I was in the room monitoring each encounter. Still, there can be subtle behavioral differences when the woman knows she has her vab on.
The best existing evidence points to vabbing’s efficacy
We observed that participants stood closer to women when they had vabbed, and that their heart rates increased more after hugging.
According to this research, which is the most rigorous study on vabbing ever undertaken and hence the best available scientific evidence, there is something about vabbing that actually creates an effect on men.
Our study has its limitations, including a relatively small sample size and imperfect proxy measures of attraction. Ultimately, whether vabbing is a genuine chemosignal or merely a cultural curiosity remains to be seen. However, by embracing flexible approaches to scientific inquiry, we move one step closer to understanding the complexities of human nature and the subtle signals that shape our interactions.
After the successful execution of this trial, we had a follow-up question: Is there a male equivalent? So we tested it. Yes, it is what you think.
Many thanks to our patron Shahid for supporting this novel research.
Spabbing(?)
Compared to the innovative techniques used by the vabbing community, men haven’t gotten as creative with their attraction methods. Based on our projected sample size, we decided to test two potential male substances versus a control substance.
In order to choose the most probable sources of male pheromones, we executed a review of the existing research based on the following questions:
What is the existing evidence that human males secrete pheromones that attract females?
Where do these pheromones come from?
What are the best studies that have been done on this topic? Are they good quality studies?
As a man, if I wanted to try to extract pheromones, where in my body could I possibly get it from, and would it successfully attract females?
Our review can be accessed here. From this, we concluded that the most studied source of potential pheromone production is in the apocrine glands, primarily located in the armpit and pubic regions. Besides that, there aren’t many known contenders.
Based on this assessment of the literature, we selected apocrine gland sweat and seminal fluid as the substances to test (aka ball sweat and semen).
How we tested it
The experiment was a similar format to the vabbing experiment. In each interaction, the female participant hugs a male who had applied one of the three treatments as perfume. After a 10 second hug, she steps away and answers a series of cognitive questions.
We had 13 participants (9 male and 4 female) who were randomly mixed and matched to make 27 different male/female pairings. Each pairing was randomly assigned one of the three treatments – semen, ball sweat, or control substance. So in total, each substance was tested 9 times by a random pairing of a male and a female. We ensured that males and females who were well-acquainted were not paired.
Everyone gave their informed consent, and the females were also informed that they would be olfactorily exposed to either seminal fluid, apocrine sweat, or a control substance. However, they did not know which substance they were being exposed to in each interaction, and they were unaware of the key measurement outcome – the social distance, or how far apart they stood after hugging.
The males were asked to provide a fresh sample of their own semen from within a few hours before the experiment. The experiment was conducted in the morning, so they were able to arrive with fresh samples. The ball sweat was collected at time of use.
Please note that convincing 9 men at a professional conference to ejaculate in a ziploc bag and then put it on their neck is no easy feat. Shoutout to these men for their scientific contributions.
The control substance was a simple mixture of bleach and water, which believe it or not smells a lot like semen, since semen is slightly alkaline and has a similar pH to our bleach-water mixture. We pretested the control substance and confirmed with several people that it smelled like semen. Since bleach is not safe to put on skin, we placed it on a sponge in an open tube which was worn as a necklace underneath the participant’s shirt.
Before each interaction, males were prepared in a separate room with an assistant who explained how to apply the treatment. Semen and sweat were applied to the side of the neck (as in the vabbing experiment), and the control substance was worn as a backwards necklace on the upper back. After each interaction they thoroughly cleaned the neck with soap and water.
There was a hidden ruler against the floor which we used to secretly measure the distance at which the female stood from the male – this was the main outcome of interest, same as in the vabbing study. We also measured heart rates before and after the hug, responses to the cognitive questions, and response times.
Results
We thought this trial would be fun and silly. What we did not anticipate was observing a significant effect from either of the male perfumes. To our surprise, females stood about 4 inches closer to males who were wearing either ball sweat (p=0.0109) or semen (p=0.0682) compared to the control substance.
The sweat group stood 4.5 inches closer and the semen group stood 3.8 inches closer on average. This is about the same effect size as vabbing!
There was greater variability in the social distance of the semen group than the sweat group, which was more consistently closer.
The other outcomes, heart rate and cognitive test performance, were not affected.
The Cohen’s d for change in social distance with sweat and semen are -1.2 and -0.76 respectively. These are fairly large effects, particularly the effect of sweat, which is 1.2 standard deviations.
The Bayes Factors are 6.1 for sweat and 1.8 for semen. Again, the evidence is stronger for sweat, meaning that the data are 6.1x more likely under the alternative (women stand closer with sweat) than the null (sweat makes no difference).
Does this mean I should put ball sweat on my neck before going out?
The study has significant limitations. The sample size was small, the treatments were not completely blinded, and not all possible confounders could be accounted for (e.g. any subconscious signaling from the males, natural level of attraction between participants). The control substance was not thoroughly validated as a convincing alternative that did not have its own repellent qualities. Despite our efforts to replicate natural conditions, it still does not perfectly mirror a real-world setting.
Still, the results suggest that females stand closer to males who have fresh ball sweat applied to their neck. While the evidence for semen is less strong, it also indicates that semen is attractive. It makes more sense for the sweat to be attractive since semen suggests a male who has already engaged in sexual activity, which might signal reduced immediate sexual availability, whereas sweat can be an indicator of physical activity, fitness, and immediate readiness.
The results are far from conclusive, but they are surprising. Future studies could improve upon methodological issues, investigate how these substances interact with other sensory cues, how menstrual cycle affects females' response, or how these natural perfumes compare to colognes.
I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if you do try out these perfumes, let us know how it works out for you.
If you’ve got another weird idea that deserves to be studied, we want to help. Reach out to maia@cosimoresearch.com or follow our publication.
"Seeds" of Science indeed :-)
Joking aside, I appreciate that someone is willing to test these things!
What would be an interesting follow up study is: if a woman wears semen cologne from one man, are other men repelled by it? And vice versa, if a man has another woman’s scent, is a second woman repelled?
Likely more difficult to get participants for though 😂 But perhaps it could be designed another way.