Beauty — the concept and the experience — fascinates some researchers:
“Beauty: In the Gonads of the Beholder — and the Beheld,” Peter T. Ellison, Hormones and Behavior, vol. 53, no. 1, January 2008, Pages 11-3. (Thanks to Amy Brand for bringing this to our attention.) The author, at Harvard University, explains in the final sentence:
“But although we can be fairly sure our gonads are speaking to us in our judgments of attractiveness, we can’t yet be sure what they are saying.”