How does one usually choose their friends? Shared interests? Similar backgrounds? Is that person kind? Dependable? The answer may be more surprising than you think. Researchers have found that people feel an immediate personal connection to those with similar body odors.
A small study was published in Science Advances Journal on Wednesday. Researchers discovered concrete evidence that in friendships where the pair bonded right away, their body odor was very similar. Too similar to be a coincidence.
Inal Ravreby is a graduate student in the lab of Noam Sobel, an olfaction researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Ravreby is very interested in the topic of “swift friends.” People that became friends right away.
She decided to do an experiment. She found 20 pairs of “swift friends” to join in. She made them stop eating garlic and onions. They also had to stop using perfume deodorant. They could only use unscented soap provided by the lab. After a few days, the “swift friends” would sleep in a fresh and clean lab-provided T-shirt for a night. The shirt would capture their natural body odor.
These t-shirts were sent to the lab and analyzed by an electronic nose. It looked at the volatiles in each shirt. To be even more thorough, 25 volunteers sniffed the shirts to compare and find similarities. The results confirmed suspicions. These friends’ odors were exceptionally similar, especially when compared to a stranger.
However, this evidence was not enough. There are many other reasons friends may smell similarly. Such as going to the same restaurants, similar lifestyles, and more. Thus, they took the experiment one step further. The same people played a mirroring game. After, they took a survey and answered questions about whether they felt bonded with their partner.
The results confirmed suspicions once again. Veronique Greenwood, a writer at The New York Times, said, “The similarities of their odors, strikingly, predicted whether both felt there had been a positive connection 71 percent of the time.” This displays that sniffing similar odors creates good feelings.
Ravreby said, “It’s very probable that at least some of them were using perfumes when they met,” and added, “But it did not mask whatever they had in common.”
Of course, there are many other reasons we befriend somebody. Researchers are just suggesting that smell may be something we pick up subconsciously.
A small study was published in Science Advances Journal on Wednesday. Researchers discovered concrete evidence that in friendships where the pair bonded right away, their body odor was very similar. Too similar to be a coincidence.
Inal Ravreby is a graduate student in the lab of Noam Sobel, an olfaction researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Ravreby is very interested in the topic of “swift friends.” People that became friends right away.
She decided to do an experiment. She found 20 pairs of “swift friends” to join in. She made them stop eating garlic and onions. They also had to stop using perfume deodorant. They could only use unscented soap provided by the lab. After a few days, the “swift friends” would sleep in a fresh and clean lab-provided T-shirt for a night. The shirt would capture their natural body odor.
These t-shirts were sent to the lab and analyzed by an electronic nose. It looked at the volatiles in each shirt. To be even more thorough, 25 volunteers sniffed the shirts to compare and find similarities. The results confirmed suspicions. These friends’ odors were exceptionally similar, especially when compared to a stranger.
However, this evidence was not enough. There are many other reasons friends may smell similarly. Such as going to the same restaurants, similar lifestyles, and more. Thus, they took the experiment one step further. The same people played a mirroring game. After, they took a survey and answered questions about whether they felt bonded with their partner.
The results confirmed suspicions once again. Veronique Greenwood, a writer at The New York Times, said, “The similarities of their odors, strikingly, predicted whether both felt there had been a positive connection 71 percent of the time.” This displays that sniffing similar odors creates good feelings.
Ravreby said, “It’s very probable that at least some of them were using perfumes when they met,” and added, “But it did not mask whatever they had in common.”
Of course, there are many other reasons we befriend somebody. Researchers are just suggesting that smell may be something we pick up subconsciously.
