Have you ever met a complete stranger and felt an immediate personal connection to them? That “clicking” feeling could be coming from their looks, how we meet them, or a recently discovered factor that may surprise you: the way that they smell.
In a study published in Science Advances on Wednesday, researchers discovered evidence that pairs of friends who had instantly “clicked” had similar body odors. Additionally, when the scientists got strangers to participate in games together, the likeness of their body odors foresaw whether they had a good relationship.
Inbal Ravreby, a student of olfaction researcher Noam Sobel at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, wondered whether similarities in body scent contributed to swift friendships. To test her theory, Ms. Ravreby recruited 20 pairs of “click friends,” or friends who had felt an interconnection straight away. She kept the test subjects on a strict regimen to strip external smells from their bodies, including bathing in unscented soap or laying off eating garlic. A few days later, each person was given a fresh lab-assigned T-shirt to wear and sleep in before transferring the more naturally scented clothing to a lab for review.
With the help of 25 volunteers and an electronic nose, Ms. Ravreby and her fellow scientists assessed the odor coming from each T-shirt. Interestingly enough, they found that friends smelled more similarly to each other than compared to strangers. “It’s very probable that at least some of them were using perfumes when they met,” Ms. Ravreby mused. “But it did not mask whatever they had in common.”
Yet there are many possibilities that can cause friends to smell alike, from living in the same environment to eating similar foods. To ensure more accurate findings and investigate the problem further, the researchers rounded up 132 strangers to play a mirroring game after going through the same process of stinking up a shirt. The game involved mimicking the motions of a fellow subject, and afterwards the participants filled out questionnaires about whether they felt a connection with their partner.
Remarkably, the scientists found that the similarity of the strangers’ scents predicted whether they felt an immediate connection 71 percent of the time. The results from these experiments indicate that smelling a body odor similar to our own can generate positive feelings, resulting in friendship.
However, the correlation between scent and behavior still contains complex mysteries. “If you think of the bouquet that is body odor, it’s 6,000 molecules at least,” Dr. Sobel said. “There are 6,000 that we know of already — it’s probably way more.”
Link to article: https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1656875608498x655947992108723200/Does%20Your%20Nose%20Help%20Pick%20Your%20Friends_%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf
In a study published in Science Advances on Wednesday, researchers discovered evidence that pairs of friends who had instantly “clicked” had similar body odors. Additionally, when the scientists got strangers to participate in games together, the likeness of their body odors foresaw whether they had a good relationship.
Inbal Ravreby, a student of olfaction researcher Noam Sobel at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, wondered whether similarities in body scent contributed to swift friendships. To test her theory, Ms. Ravreby recruited 20 pairs of “click friends,” or friends who had felt an interconnection straight away. She kept the test subjects on a strict regimen to strip external smells from their bodies, including bathing in unscented soap or laying off eating garlic. A few days later, each person was given a fresh lab-assigned T-shirt to wear and sleep in before transferring the more naturally scented clothing to a lab for review.
With the help of 25 volunteers and an electronic nose, Ms. Ravreby and her fellow scientists assessed the odor coming from each T-shirt. Interestingly enough, they found that friends smelled more similarly to each other than compared to strangers. “It’s very probable that at least some of them were using perfumes when they met,” Ms. Ravreby mused. “But it did not mask whatever they had in common.”
Yet there are many possibilities that can cause friends to smell alike, from living in the same environment to eating similar foods. To ensure more accurate findings and investigate the problem further, the researchers rounded up 132 strangers to play a mirroring game after going through the same process of stinking up a shirt. The game involved mimicking the motions of a fellow subject, and afterwards the participants filled out questionnaires about whether they felt a connection with their partner.
Remarkably, the scientists found that the similarity of the strangers’ scents predicted whether they felt an immediate connection 71 percent of the time. The results from these experiments indicate that smelling a body odor similar to our own can generate positive feelings, resulting in friendship.
However, the correlation between scent and behavior still contains complex mysteries. “If you think of the bouquet that is body odor, it’s 6,000 molecules at least,” Dr. Sobel said. “There are 6,000 that we know of already — it’s probably way more.”
Link to article: https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1656875608498x655947992108723200/Does%20Your%20Nose%20Help%20Pick%20Your%20Friends_%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf
