After reading a couple mentions of this scene here on the forum I decided to go see the movie. In this scene a guy puts a pheromone laden patch on his neck. The producers point his out to us with an arrow and the printed words “The Gilroy.”
When he meets his victim, an older, but still hot, evil woman, the camera shows pheromone squiggles like heat waves coming off the patch and homeing in on her nose. She immediately begins to act as if drugged, appearing to come into and out of lucidity. Sometimes she appears nauseous. Of course, she is highly attracted to the guy, and finds her lips wandering close to various parts of his body before she is able to pull them away.
I won’t spoil the scene for anyone, but I did want to discuss the differences between the producer’s portrayal of pheromone effects and my own experience. The effect portrayed is of a woman getting drunk and losing her inhibitions. We are all familiar with this effect of alcohol consumption, and that is perhaps why the producer chose to portray the developing reaction in that manner. I think alcohol has little effect in stimulating interest. What it does is decrease inhibitory activity by the cortex. This I believe accounts for the “beer goggles” effect, more than any actual stimulation of interest. The alcohol enables action only on interest that is already there. In fact, the general neurological depression due to alcohol may even make acting on existing interest difficult.
Pheromones in my experience have relatively little effect on inhibitions. There are some potential effects on inhibitions, but they seem small and are likely due to a sideways influence on the inhibitory mechanisms. Instead, pheromones seem to directly stimulate interests in the limbic system, which then do battle with existing inhibitions. With pheromone use, I’ve never observed interference with cortical function like I’ve seen with alcohol or appeared to be portrayed in the movie.
In the movie, a particular woman was targeted, and she responded strongly upon first exposure. While some people do respond strongly to a single exposure to pheromones, this type of reaction is difficult to predict. The number of individuals responding do go up with the passage of time, probably due to unconscious negotiations between the limbic system and the inhibitory mechanisms, which take time. The situation in the movie, in which a particular woman is targeted and responds strongly, without any depression of her inhibitions or time to mull things over, seems to me highly unlikely.
In fairness to the producer, she is getting drinks as the scene progresses, but she has obviously very strong behavioral responses before that point.
I’m really quite glad the actual human responses to pheromones are different than those portrayed in the movie. We already have alcohol, barbiturates, etc., to depress the inhibitions. Pheromones open up a whole different chapter in the book of human interactions.
I’ll be interested in hearing what others think of the scene, and how it squares with their pheromone experiences.
Hopefully sometime in the near future 