(AP)
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Sniff your way to love? Singles who have attended so-called pheromone parties haven't ruled it out. The get-togethers—which have been held in New York and Los Angeles and are planned for other cities—ask guests to submit a slept-in T-shirt that will be smelled by other participants. Then, voila! You can pick your partner based on scent, or so the theory goes. Many partygoers at one recent LA event chuckled at the idea of finding a match in a smelly T-shirt. But that's not to say there isn't some science supporting the idea.
Research studies using similar T-shirt experiments have shown that people prefer different human scents. But whose smell they prefer is dictated by a set of genes that influence our immune response—which researchers say is nature's way of preventing inbreeding and preserving genetic adaptations developed over time. One 29-year-old female wasn't getting too caught up in that, though. "I don't think I'm going to find anything more than, `Hi, how are you,' a conversation. That's expectation enough."
