In science, Claus Wedekind (c.1967-) is a Swiss mate selection researcher noted for his 1995 Sweaty T-shirt study, wherein he found the result that women—not on the contraceptive pill—were most sexually attracted to males in possession of the most dissimilar major histocompatibility complex (MHC). [1]See main: Sweaty T-shirt studyIn the study, Wedekind and his team collected DNA samples from 49 female students from the university, mostly in biology and psychology, and 44 male students, mostly from chemistry, physics and geography (see also: Beckhap's law). He asked the men to wear cotton T-shirts on a Sunday and a Monday night, to keep the shirt in a plastic bag, to use perfume-free detergents and soaps and to avoid smelly rooms, smell-producing foods and activities, like smoking and sex, that create odors. Meanwhile, the women were given a nasal spray to use for two weeks before the test to protect their nasal membranes from infection. They also each got a copy of the Patrick Suskind novel ''Perfume'' to make them more conscious of odors.
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| A screenshot from a 2001 PBS educational video on sweaty T-shirts and human mate choice, with interview commentary from American evolutionary psychologists Geoffrey Miller and Meredith Small. [3] |
“Women who are not taking oral contraceptives and who are dissimilar to a particular male's MHC perceive his odor as more pleasant than women whose MHC is more similar to that of the test man.”
