A computerized questionnaire assesses mood before exposure to AND. (Are you afraid? Rate it on a scale of 1-9. How about bored, confident, or sexually aroused? There are 18 moods to consider.) The experimenter then re-enters to set up monitors for skin conductance, blood pressure, respiration, fidgeting, and other parameters, and the subject is shown a neutral video of ocean waves to establish a baseline reading of physiological state.
Then the experiment begins. A researcher of the opposite sex enters the room and holds an opaque jar containing either AND or a control (baking powder or yeast) under the subject’s nose. The subject is instructed to sniff and then rate various characteristics of the substance, such as pleasantness, intensity, and familiarity.After exposure to the chemical, the subject watches four more ten-minute clips of the nature video, taking the mood quiz again after each one. The results show that AND increases indicators of physiological arousal, including skin conductance, heart rate, and respiration, in women. However, AND decreases arousal in men—perhaps not surprisingly, considering that AND is a significant component of male sweat. Not only did AND affect these physiological parameters in a sex-dependent manner, it also increased positive mood and decreased negative mood in women compared to men.
In addition, Wyart showed that AND raised women’s levels of cortisol, a hormone linked to both arousal and stress. Though these results were obtained with a “far from biological” amount of AND (20–50 milligrams), AND still affected mood in women, though less significantly, when ten-fold less AND (2 milligrams) was used.
When the experiments were repeated in a sexually arousing context, in which subjects were shown excerpts of the movie 9 1/2 Weeks instead of the ocean video, exposure to AND increased sexual arousal compared to the neutral setting in both sexes. Physiologically, AND decreased respiration rate (a sign of relaxation or arousal) in men and increased skin temperature in both men and women in the sexually arousing context compared to neutral context—setting the mood apparently does matter.
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