Ivan Pavlov achieved his posterity by discovering and naming the conditioned response. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it.
Humans also show conditioned responses.
Various posters on this forum express concern about other people “stealing” the benefits of their pheromone cloud. I don’t think this concern is very well founded. People have a good ability to localise smells. It is not hard to figure out which individual out of a group smells bad. The same mechanisms that enable us to localise bad odors in all probability serve to help locate the source of a particular pheromone signature.
However, a better founded concern that is rarely mentioned is the possibility of others “stealing” a conditioned response to pheromones. For instance, if a subject repeatedly experiences certain physiological symptoms from pheromone exposure in conjunction with smelling a certain scent, a conditioned response will almost certainly develop. Then the response may be expressed in the presence of the scent alone, in the absence of the pheromones. The pheromone wearer may even ocassionaly drop the pheromones and keep the scent, and expect to get the same response.
There may be drawbacks to this effect. For instance, if a gentleman were to wear the popular “Old Spice” cologne with anone supplementation, and his girlfriend had a strong sexual response to the anone, it is conceivable that she could exhibit the same physiological response in the presense of other men wearing Old Spice, without any supplemental pheromones.
Conditioned responses may work against the pheromone wearer in another way also. A subject may have already developed a response to a particular scent. For instance, if a lady’s father always wore Old Spice, she may have developed a response to that scent and a prospective suitor wearing Old Spice and pheromones may find that the pheromone response he is after is swamped by the previous conditioned responses.
Both these possibilities can be avoided for the most part, by not using scents that are popular in the local culture. For instance, in most of the United States the Old Spice fragrance should be avoided for two reasons. Both because it has been around for many years and people will have formed previous associations and conditioned responses, and also because its ready availability makes it likely that many other people will be encountered wearing that scent, who could trigger conditioned responses. Old Spice would probably be a good choice in a European culture where it has little historical popularity or usage though. It is a great scent.
Tabac is the German equivalent of Old Spice. It is an inexpensive, good scent that is very popular in Germany. It would not be a good choice for pheromone users in Germany, but it would be a great choice for users in the US.
Using scents from outside the culture in which you are living is one of the least expensive ways to get unique high-quality scents at reasonable prices. Alternatively, one could go for either custom blended scents, or scents that are too expensive for common usage in the culture one normally inhabits.
By whichever means obtained, the use of unusual scents will ensure the pheromone wearer the unshared benefits of any Pavlovian conditioning.
