Everybody has their own distinct smell from the putrid smell of garbage to the fragrant whiff of flowers. However, if human beings are similar to our other land mammal friends, then the smells on our bodies might be telling a message to other people. Some more distinct smells are giving off a much clearer message than others. For example, ones we find gross, like the smell of someone who has been working in a dumpster or someone who hasn’t showered for some time.
But researchers who study how people smell each other are piecing together that something subconscious in the nose and brain is triggered by specific smells. With this thought in mind, researchers are questioning if these triggers are altering our choices or maybe even altering our decision of whom we like to hang out with.
On Wednesday, an analysis was released in the journal Science Advances where researchers studied a few friendships where friends immediately liked each other. What the researchers found quite fascinating was that the odor of one friend seemed to almost match the other. These researchers also did another investigation where they got a few strangers to play games with each other, and they used each stranger’s smell to predict whether their relationship would turn out to be sturdy.
Even though many other factors will shape how a friendship will end, like personality and place, researchers are also adding smell to the list of things that can sculpt a relationship.
Scientists who have been researching friendships discovered that friends in friendships have more things in common like age, hobbies, and even genes and brain behaviors than they do with strangers. A graduate student named Inbal Ravreby, who works in Noam Sobel’s olfaction research lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, had an idea of testing if quicker friendships may have a relationship to the similarities in people’s smells.
To test it, she gathered 20 pairs of friends that formed quick friendships and told them to lay off foods that change human body odor like onions and garlic. She also asked them to stop using deodorant and use unscented soap to clean themselves. When they went to sleep, she gave them a fresh and clean shirt for them to sleep in to absorb their smells. Then she sent the shirts to scientists for them to examine.
Along with her colleagues, Ms. Ravreby analyzed the smells that came from each t-shirt using an electronic nose to find the similarities between the smell of the t-shirts. They were intrigued to discover that the friends in each pair had odors that were more similar than compared to those of people outside of their friendships. This suggests that odor can be something the nose detects and can change how a friendship turns out.
“It’s very probable that at least some of them were using perfumes when they met,” Ms. Ravreby pointed out. “But it did not mask whatever they had in common.”
Even though the results suggest that people with similar odors will get along better, they aren’t absolute. There could be many reasons why a pair of friends have similar smells, for example going to the same places and being with the same person can both change one’s smell to be like another’s.
This causes things to be difficult when trying to see whether the smell or the foundation of the relationship came first. To solve this problem, the research team got 132 strangers to play a mirroring game together. After the game, they answered multiple questions that involved their connection with the partner they were paired with.
The results showed that the similarities or the differences in a pair’s odors predicted whether the two would be friends 71% of the time. The result of the investigation strongly suggested that when we smell someone with a similar odor to ours we subconsciously build a liking for that person. However, Dr. Sobel warns that even though the similarity of odors does make a difference, it is only a single factor and doesn’t dictate the entire friendship.
Due to the pandemic, it is now hard to do any further detailed research by Ms. Ravreby and her other colleagues because getting people to come close together to smell each other has been difficult currently.
The team now has their eyes set on the project of changing people’s smells to see what smells attract people to one another. And if our smells have anything to do with our behavior and actions like other land mammals, then we might be using our sense of smell to make decisions. There are thousands of smells for researchers to study along with the messages each odor can tell. Each new smell researchers find could say so much more than we think.
“If you think of the bouquet that is body odor, it’s 6,000 molecules at least,” Dr. Sobel pointed out. “There are 6,000 that we know of already – it’s probably way more.”
Source:
The New York Times
But researchers who study how people smell each other are piecing together that something subconscious in the nose and brain is triggered by specific smells. With this thought in mind, researchers are questioning if these triggers are altering our choices or maybe even altering our decision of whom we like to hang out with.
On Wednesday, an analysis was released in the journal Science Advances where researchers studied a few friendships where friends immediately liked each other. What the researchers found quite fascinating was that the odor of one friend seemed to almost match the other. These researchers also did another investigation where they got a few strangers to play games with each other, and they used each stranger’s smell to predict whether their relationship would turn out to be sturdy.
Even though many other factors will shape how a friendship will end, like personality and place, researchers are also adding smell to the list of things that can sculpt a relationship.
Scientists who have been researching friendships discovered that friends in friendships have more things in common like age, hobbies, and even genes and brain behaviors than they do with strangers. A graduate student named Inbal Ravreby, who works in Noam Sobel’s olfaction research lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, had an idea of testing if quicker friendships may have a relationship to the similarities in people’s smells.
To test it, she gathered 20 pairs of friends that formed quick friendships and told them to lay off foods that change human body odor like onions and garlic. She also asked them to stop using deodorant and use unscented soap to clean themselves. When they went to sleep, she gave them a fresh and clean shirt for them to sleep in to absorb their smells. Then she sent the shirts to scientists for them to examine.
Along with her colleagues, Ms. Ravreby analyzed the smells that came from each t-shirt using an electronic nose to find the similarities between the smell of the t-shirts. They were intrigued to discover that the friends in each pair had odors that were more similar than compared to those of people outside of their friendships. This suggests that odor can be something the nose detects and can change how a friendship turns out.
“It’s very probable that at least some of them were using perfumes when they met,” Ms. Ravreby pointed out. “But it did not mask whatever they had in common.”
Even though the results suggest that people with similar odors will get along better, they aren’t absolute. There could be many reasons why a pair of friends have similar smells, for example going to the same places and being with the same person can both change one’s smell to be like another’s.
This causes things to be difficult when trying to see whether the smell or the foundation of the relationship came first. To solve this problem, the research team got 132 strangers to play a mirroring game together. After the game, they answered multiple questions that involved their connection with the partner they were paired with.
The results showed that the similarities or the differences in a pair’s odors predicted whether the two would be friends 71% of the time. The result of the investigation strongly suggested that when we smell someone with a similar odor to ours we subconsciously build a liking for that person. However, Dr. Sobel warns that even though the similarity of odors does make a difference, it is only a single factor and doesn’t dictate the entire friendship.
Due to the pandemic, it is now hard to do any further detailed research by Ms. Ravreby and her other colleagues because getting people to come close together to smell each other has been difficult currently.
The team now has their eyes set on the project of changing people’s smells to see what smells attract people to one another. And if our smells have anything to do with our behavior and actions like other land mammals, then we might be using our sense of smell to make decisions. There are thousands of smells for researchers to study along with the messages each odor can tell. Each new smell researchers find could say so much more than we think.
“If you think of the bouquet that is body odor, it’s 6,000 molecules at least,” Dr. Sobel pointed out. “There are 6,000 that we know of already – it’s probably way more.”
Source:
The New York Times
