Pheromone perfume and oils have gone Tik Tok viral over the past few years, with women posting online that wearing pheromones had men flocking to them all night, and others wearing the perfume during their server shifts attracted larger tips. Wearing these scents are said to work with your natural body chemistry to attract the opposite sex.

“This is a warning. Do not get this pheromone oil if you are not ready to be more attractive,” said content creator Jessica Ace in a Tik Tok video posted in Sep. 2023.

In the video, which now has over 620,000 views, she says that when wearing Pure Instinct pheromone infused perfume oil, more people start conversations with her and held longer eye contact with her.

Are pheromone-infused perfumes the love potion of the 21st century? Can these products really make you irresistible to your partner, or help you find that special someone – or is it all just a gimmick?

Current scientific research does not support the claims of these products, according to Health News.

“The idea that you could put something on that would influence every person in some sort of predictable way is just not realistic to the way human behavior works, said Dr. Jessica Gaby, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University.

“There’s not really good, strong evidence that there are pheromones in the first place And so the idea that they’re selling these pheromones perfumes is just erroneous,” Gaby said. “Then you have to also take into account these variations in individual fragrance preferences in the way that a perfume might smell on you.”

The existence of human pheromones is still debated, and because the perception of smell is so personal, what’s considered attractive or sexy varies greatly from individual to individual. Still, there are over 30,000 #pheromoneperfume posts on Tik Tok with thousands of creators sharing positive reviews and perfume makers are standing behind their product.

Jacqui Rubinoff is the owner and vice president of Eye of Love, which sells pheromone-infused products like fragrance and candles. She argues individual responses will vary, but pheromone perfumes can absolutely help attract a new suitor or spice up an existing relationship.

“Products containing pheromones have the potential to enhance how attractive your partner finds you. These formulations are designed to intensify natural chemical signals associated with attraction, create positive associations through a pleasant scent, and contribute to a confidence boost,” she said.

In animals, pheromones trigger sexual attraction. Perfumers formulate pheromone fragrances to replicate this reaction, making the wearer perceived as sexier. InStyle reports that these types of fragrances either contain synthetic pheromones or do not contain pheromones at all, and instead contain a mixture of scents that are meant to emulate the scent of skin, though pheromones are undetectable to the human nose.

“Pheromones themselves are odorless…” said Rubinoff. “When people refer to the scent of pheromones in products like perfumes, they are typically the accompanying fragrances added to enhance the overall product, as opposed to the pheromones themselves.”

Human scent: More than pheromones?

Pheromones are chemical substances found in the bodily fluids of certain species, like mice and ants, that are used in communication and attraction, according to Healthline.

Gaby’s research expertise focuses on understanding how human smell signals impact social interactions. Gaby says the study of these chemicals derived from insects.

“Among the first pheromones to be identified was this chemical in moths where the female emits it,” she said. “Every single time a male moth smells that pheromone he goes to her and initiates mating.”

While pheromones exist in many animals, there isn’t solid evidence that they exist in humans.

“We have yet to isolate any chemical compound in humans that works that way… It’s not that it’s impossible. For instance, infants that smell secretions from the mother’s breast and you initiate sucking,” she said. “But there’s nothing in human adult behavior that is reliably triggered by a single compound that’s emitted by another human.”

This is not to say that scent is not influential. Gaby says that body odor is important in human social communication. She says that traditionally, science suggests that important chemical signaling comes from the armpits, but more current advances find that there’s information coming from all over the body, making it complex to determine exactly which compounds are the signalers, and if they’re pheromones.

A 2013 study from KU Leuvan in Belgium stated that human pheromones could be present in urine, semen, vaginal secretions, or breast milk but, as Gaby mentioned, most research has focused on sweat.

“The way that chemical analysis works, it could be that something that’s present in a very low concentration is actually the important thing. So if you have thousands of chemical compounds in the emission of human sweat, isolating exactly which part of that is the important part is just a challenging question,” she said.

Though it’s unclear if human pheromones exist, smell still plays a major role in attraction – even platonically. Research conducted by Gaby and colleague Vivian Zayas in 2017 asked participants to make social judgments on volunteers with their normal deodorant and fragrance products, and then without.

While blindfolded, the “raters” were asked to assess how friendly, likable, and familiar the other participant smelled. They found that the heterosexual women in the study perceived individuals differently depending on whether they were wearing their fragrances or or in a natural state and that whole body odor came into play.

“People don’t tend to think very much about the sense of smell. And so we sort of, we sort of think of it as being as having a supporting role,” she said.

While there may not be pheromones in these products bringing in a rush of potential daters, fragrance is proven to boost a person’s self-esteem. 90% of women included in a 2003 study reported feeling more confident while wearing perfume than without it.

“Giving people fragrance, something that smells good – especially if it smells good to them – modifies their own behavior, then they act more confident. And if you act more confident, you’re gonna get more approaches,” said Gaby.