somatopsychic vs psychosomatic effects

Pheromone Science Pheromone Theory & Molecules
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I wonder how much of pheromonal effect is based upon pheromone dependent biochemical response vs placebo effect that establishes a positive feedback loop resulting in congruent behavioral change. Simply put, does a “happy” or “horny” pheromone biochemically make you have that response or is some of the effect due to the fact that you know you are taking it and thus some of the effect is psychological - i.e. you know you are taking instant shine or turn up the heat so you begin acting more social or sexy and people respond accordingly?

How much of the pheromone is effecting you biochemically vs external “targets”. I am new here but I have seen a good bit of discussion on acting congruent with the pheromone mix you are using. I wonder how much of the effect is conditioned pavlovian behavioral response of the user, which in turn effects the response they get from those they interact with. I am not saying that its all “imagined” or just in our own minds - since pheromones clearly have been shown to incur biochemical changes in targets as well as the wearer. But since some wearers seem to respond more strongly than others, I wonder if their chemistry or their mindset that is the determining factor. I would think that self hypnotic techniques, used within NLP and ericsonian models would be very helpfull in amplifying biochemical effects (when I spray on Instant Gentleman, I become as suave, cool and in control as James Bond).

Obviously, measurement of “success” is a highly subjective experience and difficult to accurately measure. But perhaps some of the more experienced users can posit on how much congruent behavior and internal mental programming has effected your results when using different pheromones.

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A good question, Gandalf, and one which I have been kind of wondering about myself. I am not exactly one of “the more experienced users” but I have had a good time recently with the pheromones, and am “getting used to them” quite well.

What I can say is that I have been acting “congruent” to the image I want to project for quite some time now, prior to the use of pheromones which for me started nearly a couple of months ago. So I didn’t have to change my behaviour really to incorporate wearing the pheromones.

I started studying body language, NLP, etc in earnest about three years ago, and so have been hip to what it takes to portray confidence, alpha characteristics, etc. And I guess many posters are in the same situation as me; they come to the forum and to pheromones from a self-improvement background in the first place.

So not only have I been looking at my body language and the image I project, but also I have been a keen observer of other people for quite some time. My personal theories of what are happening so far are highly speculative, but I observe that people seem “primed” to exaggerate their nonverbal communication just a little bit more, and sometimes quite a bit more, by the pheromones.

With regard to the placebo effect: I think I had 15 minutes of placebo effect when I sprayed on Instant Female Magic for the first time. I felt a bit of a lift. But subsequently it did and does nothing to me personally, because I am male. I know it brings some men down, I am fortunate not to be one of those men so affected. I wondered if it might give me a lift for some weird reason the first time I tried it, and it did, but I guess that was the placebo effect in action, and very short-lived.

I think, and this is not very scientific but just from personal experience, that I am not very susceptible to placebo effects myself. Or they tend to give me a 15-minute buzz of expectation at best. This is just from hanging around crazy psychology students in my youth, who’d say “Drink this/smoke this/drop this”… with various placebos just for a prank. Nothing much happened to me on such occasions. So I’m inclined personally to treat any effect that lasts for much longer than 15 minutes as something substantial. I think I know a genuine neurological event from a placebo one, thanks largely to a misspent youth :smiley:

But all the same, there is a positive feedback loop going on of some sort, pheromones may just do 10% of the work like the oft-quoted maxim of this forum. But that 10% may be enough to push some lucky folk, like I think myself, over a certain threshold.