You Smell Happiness: How Positive Emotions Are Transmitted Through Body Smell

Human sweat is not the most appetizing substance. And yet, despite perfumes and deodorants, it allows us to communicate states and emotions to each other: excitement, fear, and even joy.

“In terms of the perfect first step, this spray is designed to keep every guy one step ahead,” says Unilever, which sells Axe products. Of course, unless you're a naive 13-year-old boy, you probably won't believe that deodorant is a magical elixir that can make exemplary girls behave audaciously. However, a person’s mood can be changed by smell. Recently, specialists from Utrecht University (Netherlands), whose work was funded by Unilever, found that there is a trigger for happiness, which is perceived subconsciously and occurs due to the smell of human sweat.

The secretion glands allow people to send a variety of messages to each other. After catching the smell of men’s sweat, women feel anxious and can sometimes even tell if a person was aroused. Yet until now, most studies have focused on sexual arousal and negative emotions, particularly fear. Without a doubt, these feelings play a huge role in questions of survival and evolutionary success. However, the author of the study, a psychologist at Utrecht University and director of the William James Research Center in Lisbon, Gun Samin, believes that the ability to convey positive emotions through smell also exists. “The pursuit of happiness is not an individual enterprise,” says Samin. Based on this statement, he and his team set out to test whether people could communicate happiness through sweat.

For this study, scientists first needed biological material. To get it, they recruited 12 men whose sweat at the time of the experiment contained various “aromatic additives”: from substances that occur during sex to aromatic garlic oils. Specialists provided the study participants with sterile absorbent napkins, seated them in the cinema and asked them to watch three films: cheerful ("The Jungle Book" by Disney Film Studios), scary (cult "The Shining" by Stanley Kubrick) and neutral (a series of weather forecasts).

“If we can isolate a combination of substances that ‘include’ a state of happiness, we can make mood-boosting products.” When the biomaterial was collected, the researchers asked 36 females to rate it and recorded what emotions were displayed on their faces. In addition, after each stage of the experiment, the participants underwent short cognitive tests and assessed the “pleasant qualities and intensity” of each sample. At the same time, neither they nor the authors of the study could not take into account the appearance of men, so that the visual impression did not affect the results.

Scientists have seen that women react differently to different samples. When they smelled “happy sweat,” they began to show physical signs of joy, including a “Duchen smile”—a sincere expression of pleasure that manifests itself all over the face, including the eyes—as opposed to an insincere “stewardess smile.” The women also reported feelings of joy, analyzing a positive jump in their mood.

Of course, we all know that advertising plays on feelings. Marketers work their way into our psyche every year using the nostalgic ringing of Christmas bells. Fast food restaurants lure us with giant photos of sparkling burgers and bold-printed exhortations: "Faster, eat here." But what if companies could soon manipulate us with smells, too? “If you can isolate a combination of substances that ‘include’ happiness, you can make mood-enhancing products,” says Samin. Opportunities here open up the sea - and it's frightening. Need to calm the evil bully? Forget about tear gas cans and smear it with the “smell of happiness” instead. Do you want a stunning party? Add a little sweat to the ionizer. Feeling sad? Sprinkle sweat on your wrist, and your mood will improve, like Prozac in the form of an aerosol.

Although, of course, in fact, the effect of such development will be much more subtle. "It's unlikely to knock you down enough to put you in seventh heaven with happiness," adds Samin. In addition, replication of human sweat for commercial purposes can be extremely difficult. First of all, researchers will have to analyze its unique chemical cocktail, which contains from 180 to 200 substances. “It’s like a chemical barcode,” says Johan Lundström, an assistant professor in the Department of Critical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, who studies how the brain perceives and processes smells. Scientists will also have to make sure they get a clear signal, as people usually associate smells with memories and use their own fragrance map.

And yet Lundström believes that if you have the money and the time, anything is possible. In the end, the researchers have already managed to synthesize a mixture of two substances that can use the smell to communicate anxiety and panic anxiety to rats – although in the case of joy, the question remains open. published



P.S. And remember, just changing our consumption – together we change the world!

Source: theoryandpractice.ru