HappyKitsune,
I think you are both right, just looking at this through different lenses.
Animals have both modulator and releaser pheromones. Modulators influence but don’t cause behavior. Releasers cause behavior. At least that is the formal breakdown of types of pheromones that effect animals.
An example of a releaser pheromone in animals is Androstenone. In pigs, subjecting females to Androstenone cause them to assume a mating posture, and accept the male for mating. Finding a releaser pheromones for humans is kind of the holy grail for the PUA group, and that has driven much of the pheromone industry.
But, in human pheromone research we’ve found modulators and substances with some promise to be releasers. But we’ve found no releasers yet. Either we have lost those receptors, or our brains have become too sophisticated to respond to releasers in that way.
Modulators on the other hand… we have tons of those and pretty much any pheromone that works for you is a modulator of one kind or another. They can modulate your physical and emotional responsiveness to stimulation of one form or another, visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, touch, and they can modulate your internal perception and interpretation of incoming signals, and either cause an increase or decrease in mental alertness or emotional responsiveness.
They can change your responsiveness either through neurohormone release or other neurotransmitter regulation. Those regulatory neurohormones or neurotransmitters bring about real physical changes in your internal emotional, mental, and/or physical state.
Pheromones can increase or decrease anxiety. Pheromones can increase or decrease the firing rate of certain branches of nerves in your body. Pheromones can modulate your hunger. They can change the way you perceive sound, sight, touch, taste. They can ramp up your physical responsiveness to touch. They can increase or decrease your ability to empathsize with others. And they can influence (either up or down) your emotions in very powerful ways. Pheromones can also increase or decrease feelings of aggression or social harmony. Pheromones can make you feel giddy with happiness, and they can make you feel miserably sick and anxious. Pheromones can signal social dominance or submissiveness, sexual attraction and/or fear and danger.
How these effects exactly come about is still being researched, and what is really interesting is how different responses can be in different people. Genetics plays a huge role, I’m certain, as does your starting state. Difference in receptors can change whether or how strongly you respond to a certain pheromone. Differences in brain neurochemistry can change the way you react to a certain pherochemical signal.
I think if you are getting a novel response, and believe it is due to the pheromone, it is easy to test that again and see if it is repeatable. I generally don’t credit placebo effects to myself because I know my physical responses and baseline very well, and I can tell right away when something is different. Placebo effects in yourself would imply that the pheromone has no effect on you, and you are making one up. If you respond strongly enough to a pheromone that you can feel a difference, it is most likely not going to be a placebo.
It has been researched pretty well, that pheromones have different effects on the wearer when they are with someone of the opposite sex as opposed to when they are with someone of the same sex or alone. So, just because the effects are different on you around a guy doesn’t invalidate your responses at all, just the opposite!
Placebo is much more likely to be a factor in interpreting other people’s response to you wearing a certain pheromone, because we are looking for a response.
But test it again to see if it is repeatable. It is also a good idea when testing to note in your private testing journal where you are in your cycle, since some of the effects seem to increase or decrease in women depending on where we are in our hormonal state.
So, the effect in question happened when you were with a guy pal. Try wearing this same pheromone around another guy pal and see if you get the same response. Also since you’ve been with your friend now, without the pheromone and seen how things went back to normal, test the pheromone around this fellow again. And then test it around a gal pal. That will give you more information about how this pheromone effects you around different people and on different days.
Diane