sciencetech-blog

comments

If you're happy and you know it… let someone have a good sniff.

Scientists have discovered that we can convey happiness through our sense of smell.

They found that the odours produced by our bodies can communicate our joy to others – a phenomenon known as chemosignalling.

Sniffing: Scientists found that the odours produced by our bodies can communicate our joy to others – a phenomenon known as chemosignalling. Although chemosignalling had been shown to convey fear and disgust, little was known about how it related to positive emotions until now

Chemosignals act as a medium through which people can become 'emotionally synchronised', outside of their conscious awareness.

Although chemosignalling had previously been shown to convey fear and disgust, little was known about how it related to positive emotions, the researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands said.

For their study, they collected the sweat of 'sender' participants in happy, fearful and neutral states using pads placed under their armpits while they watched different film clips.

These pads were cut up, put into jars, and presented to a group of 'receivers' to sniff, in a random order.

While they sniffed, they were hooked up to an electromyograph, which measured subtle differences in the activity of their facial muscles as a function of the emotion they were experiencing, induced by the sweat.

Smiels and smells: Experts explained that humans are a social species with the capacity to share happiness, using not only methods such as vision, hearing, and touch, but also the sense of smell

'Exposure to sweat from happy senders elicited a happier facial expression than did sweat from fearful or neutral senders,' the researchers wrote in the journal Psychological Science.

'Our findings suggest that not only a negative state, but also a positive state (happiness) can be transferred by means of odours.'

The researchers said: 'Happiness benefits the individual on multiple levels, as it restores the damaging impact of negative emotions on the cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and immune systems, and broadens attention to inspire creative ideas.

'Humans are a social species with the capacity to share these positive effects, using not only modalities such as vision, hearing, and touch, but also - as this exploratory study indicates - the sense of smell.'