Interestingly, the approach of menstruation did not seem to have any observable effect on how the women dressed, suggesting that, at least in this study, the onset of ovulation had a greater impact on a woman's dressing habits than so-called PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome).
"There's a popular notion that when women approach menstrual onset, they get out their bloated clothes and they pull out their sweats," Haselton explained. "So if what we were measuring was a PMS effect, you'd expect that if a woman has her photo taken one or two days before menstrual onset, then she's going to dress frumpier than someone who had her photo taken 10 days before menstrual onset. But we didn't find that to be the case."
The research builds on a new body of research showing subtle and surprising shifts in women's behavior each month as they approach their most fertile period, including a propensity to flirt with men other than their mates and an inclination to stray from their routine in ways that are suggestive of mate-shopping. Meanwhile, the findings conflict with conventional wisdom among social scientists, who have long maintained that humans are rare among primates in showing no outward signs of entering fertile phases. Our closest living relative, the Chimpanzee, famously displays swellings of the genital area when fertile.
"Something in women's minds is tracking the ovulation cycle," Haselton said. "At some level, women 'know' when they are most fertile. And we have seen some evidence that men may at some level 'know' too although with less certainty."
Haselton and Bleske-Rechek, however, stop short of ascribing the changes they have detected to the kinds of displays of fertility that are common in the animal kingdom.
The changes may well be the byproduct of the "stew of changes" to which, mounting evidence suggests, women are
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Contact: Meg Sullivan
msullivan@support.ucla.edu
310-825-1046
University of California - Los Angeles
9-Oct-2006