Scents That Surprisingly Make Women More Attractive To Men

In the 2014 study "Human Male Sexual Response to Olfactory Stimuli," neurologist and psychiatrist Alan Hirsch and Jason Gruss, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist, of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation discovered that certain scents had the ability to — this is about to get real weird, folks — produce an "increase in penile blood flow." The scent of black licorice especially worked some magic. 

According to the study, the spicy confection's odor increased blood flow by some 13 percent. When combined with the scent of soda, the percentage remained the same. However, black licorice paired with the scent of a doughnut prompted an even stronger, umm, response. Penile blood flow increased by a whopping 31.5 percent.

This is even stranger considering that black licorice is divisive. "People either love it or hate it and, as far as I can tell, it's not a learned like or dislike," Marcia Pelchat of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennslyvania, told NBC News. And yet, the scent of it seems to drive men wild. Licorice is apparently nature's Viagra.