Culture and menstruation the ideal of synchronised tidal, lunar, menstrual and seasonal periodicities whose overall harmony (it is believed) confers spiritual power and fertility. To many, such cultural associations appear persuasive in view of the fact that in humans, the menstrual cycle quite closely approximates the moon's 29.5-day synodic cycle, unlike in chimpanzees (~36 days) or bonobos (~40 days). Statistical information from hunter gatherers is lacking, but where large-scale western studies focus on women's peak reproductive years—removing outlier values—the cycle length gravitates around 29.1–29.5 days, while the figure for women in their thirties shortens toward 28 days. In no extant human population has
Menstrual cycle with test scores. When completing empathy exercises, women in the follicular stage of their menstrual cycle performed better than women in their midluteal phase. A significant correlation between progesterone levels and the ability to accurately recognize emotion was found. Performances on emotion recognition tasks were better when women had lower progesterone levels. Women in the follicular stage showed higher emotion recognition accuracy than their midluteal phase counterparts. Women were found to react more to negative stimuli when in midluteal stage over the women in the follicular stage, perhaps indicating more reactivity to social stress during that menstrual cycle phase. Overall,