A large body of research has shown that women are more responsive to masculine voices, faces, and odours at times when they’re most likely to become pregnant, but according to Professor Nicolas Guéguen, a psychologist at the University of South Brittany in France, no studies have probed the obvious outcome of such inclinations.

So, Professor Guéguen and his team recruited several young men to experimentally hit on women at a street corner, in order to determine whether fertility affects receptivity to male advances or not. And, it seems that women are most likely to give their phone number to a male stranger during the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle.

Professor Guéguen said:

[previous] studies did not focus on women’s behaviour. [This is] the first study to test the role of the menstrual cycle on courtship request, in a real social context and not in laboratory.

In conducting their study, which was published in the journal Biological Psychology, the scientists recruited five handsome 20-year-old men (selected from a larger group and judged for attractiveness by 28 women), in order to experimentally express interest in women passing a street corner, by asking the unsuspecting females for a date.

On nice summer days, the young men approached the first young woman they saw passing the street corner and delivered a standardized pick-up line:

Hello. My name’s Antoine. I just wanted to say that I think you’re really pretty. I have to go to work this afternoon, and I was wondering if you would give me your phone number. I’ll phone you later and we can have a drink together someplace.

If the woman gave her number, “Antoine” responded: “See you soon,” and left. If she refused, a similarly cheery response of: “Too bad. It’s not my day. Have a nice afternoon!” was given.

Almost immediately after the encounter, and regardless of how the subject responded, a female researcher approached the woman and informed her of the experimental nature of the encounter, asking the woman to complete a short questionnaire. The survey asked questions about age, contraception use and days since her last period (or pregnancy status). Although none of the questions gauged her likely disappointment at the deception.

Of 506 women that were approached, just 51 declined to take part in the survey. And, from analysing the responses of the 455 active participants, Guéguen noted that in total, 8.6% of the women provided their phone number to the men. However, women not taking oral contraception were more than twice as likely to accept the men’s offer as women taking the pill (12% versus 5.8%). Although this could just reflect the likelihood that women on the pill may be more likely to already have a man in their life than women not taking birth control.

However, when Guéguen analyzed the data according to the women’s fertility, a more interesting trend emerged – Amongst naturally cycling women, those in their fertile phase accepted 21.7% of advances, whilst women in the midst of their periods responded to just 7.8% of men, a significant statistical difference that did not exist for women on the pill.

Professor Guéguen cautiously suggests his interpretations may offer real-world behavioural support for research showing that women are most receptive to advances when they are likely to get pregnant.

Hormones could play a role in the study’s results, since estradiol (a form of oestrogen) and progesterone levels rise and fall during a woman’s cycle, and most birth control pills contain progesterone. But Guéguen cautions that a woman’s relationship status could mask such associations, because single women could be less likely to be on birth control.

To firm up the results, Guéguen is also repeating the study in scenarios where men may be more likely to get a woman’s cellphone number, describing a follow up study where:

Twenty-year-old women were approached by 20-year-old males in nightclubs and solicited to dance with them during the period when slow songs were played

And noting:

Until this study comes out, guys may want to focus their attention on less personal cues to a women’s interest.

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• What do women really want?
• Science says be direct, if you want to chat-up a man
• Heavy cell phone use may be linked to poor sperm quality
• More Japanese couples skip sex
• Hips do lie: A sexy walk is intended to deceive men

Posted by Jonathan in Biology, Psychology

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