Why Dudes Who Can't Smell Never Get Laid
Noses DreamstimeOne of the unexpected parts of not having a sense of smell. About 2 million people in the United States can't smell anything. That's got to be great if, say, you're walking past a dumpster, but not-so-great if you're looking for love. Research suggests that men who can't smell have fewer sex partners than men with fully functioning nostrils. About five times fewer. A team of researchers had already found a correlation between not having a sense of smell and having feelings of insecurity. (There are a few possibilities about why: either we can't check ourselves for odor or we take comfort from certain smells.) A more recent study from the same researchers compared 32 people who couldn't smell--22 women and 10 men--with a control group, asking both groups about the number of sexual partners they'd had. The question was, if people are insecure because they can't smell,...