If we like someone immediately, it may be due to their body odor. A research has shown that the faint aroma of our fellow humans promotes both sexual and platonic connections between men and women. Friends typically have similar bodily odors. Researchers say this shows our species’ “social chemistry.”
Body odor informs us a lot about people, even if we’re not aware of it. It may reveal emotions like fear, hostility, excitement, or despair, as well as a woman’s cycle phase or a person’s age. Body odor may also indicate our immunological genes, which may influence partner choice.
Non-romantic friendships? Do we smell? Inbal Ravreby and his Weizmann Institute of Science colleagues examined. “We thought a comparable body odor would enhance friendship,” they said. Her interest was “click friendships,” a spontaneous affection that may form when individuals meet.
“We explored whether we like strangers at first scent,” the researchers claim. They selected 20 male or female pals who suddenly “clicked” at the start of their connection. The researchers utilized an electronic nose to compare the friends’ bodily odors. 20 non-friendly pairs were used as comparison groups.
The buddies’ body odors were more similar than typical. The fragrance values for friends were five units away on a five-dimensional scale, while for random couples it was 6.5 units. Researchers call these changes “substantial.”
Can people smell these differences? Scientists used 25 “sniffing noses” to test this. 20 “click” friend pairings, 40 friend pairs without spontaneous compassion, and 20 random comparison pairs provided odor samples. The 20 “click” buddy pairings had the most identical body scents, regardless of gender.
Another investigation demonstrated that body odor may indicate whether two individuals like each other. 21 men and 45 women played the “mirror game” with strangers, moving like a picture and a mirror image without communicating. They were asked how close they felt and how nice the meeting was.
The more the body scents matched, the more likely randomly matched couples “clicked” “People employ olfactory information in non-romantic interactions,” experts say. “Smell similarity may be connected to friendship’s origins.”
The neural mechanics underlying why we appreciate persons with similar scents are unknown. Ravreby and his colleagues suggest that individuals build an olfactory pattern of their own odor note and subconsciously match it to others’. Unknown is what benefit this has.