Sexual Chemosignals: Evidence that Men Process Olfactory Signals of Women's Sexual Arousal.

Research suggests that humans can communicate emotional states (e.g., fear, sadness) via chemosignals.

The smell of death: evidence that putrescine elicits threat management mechanisms.

The ability to detect and respond to chemosensory threat cues in the environment plays a vital role in survival across species. However, little is known about which chemical compounds can act as olfactory threat signals in humans. We hypothesized that brief exposure to putrescine, a chemical compound produced by the breakdown of fatty acids in the decaying tissue of dead bodies, can function as a chemosensory warning signal, activating threat management responses (e.

Hopelessly mortal: The role of mortality salience, immortality and trait self-esteem in personal hope.

Do people lose hope when thinking about death? Based on Terror Management Theory, we predicted that thoughts of death (i.e., mortality salience) would reduce personal hope for people low, but not high, in self-esteem, and that this reduction in hope would be ameliorated by promises of immortality.

Eaten up by boredom: consuming food to escape awareness of the bored self.

Research indicates that being bored affectively marks an appraised lack of meaning in the present situation and in life. We propose that state boredom increases eating in an attempt to distract from this experience, especially among people high in objective self-awareness. Three studies were conducted to investigate boredom's effects on eating, both naturally occurring in a diary study and manipulated in two experiments.

Guns, germs, and stealing: exploring the link between infectious disease and crime.

Can variation in crime rates be traced to the threat of infectious disease? Pathogens pose an ongoing challenge to survival, leading humans to adapt defenses to manage this threat. In addition to the biological immune system, humans have psychological and behavioral responses designed to protect against disease. Under persistent disease threat, xenophobia increases and people constrict social interactions to known in-group members.

From the grave to the cradle: evidence that mortality salience engenders a desire for offspring.

On the basis of terror management theory, the authors hypothesized that reminders of mortality (mortality salience) should promote the desire for offspring to the extent that it does not conflict with other self-relevant worldviews that also serve to manage existential concerns. In 3 studies, men, but not women, desired more children after mortality salience compared with various control conditions. In support of the authors' hypothesis that women's desire for offspring was inhibited as a function of concerns about career success, Study 3 showed that career strivings moderated the effect of mortality salience on a desire for offspring for female participants only; furthermore, Study 4 revealed that when the compatibility of having children and a career was made salient, female participants responded to mortality salience with an increased number of desired children.

Hiding in the crowd: can mortality salience promote affiliation with others who oppose one's worldviews?

The present research highlights affiliation defenses in the psychological confrontation with death. In 3 experiments, it was found that mortality salience led to increased affiliation strivings, as indicated by a greater preference for sitting within a group as opposed to sitting alone. Mortality salience actually led to increased affiliation with a worldview-threatening group (Experiments 1-2), even when affiliation with the group forced participants to attack their own worldviews (Experiment 3).