As social creatures, people need connections to satiate fundamental needs for belonging, support, caring, and love. Therefore, it is crucial to value relationships with friends and significant others and those we have with our family. Different factors, such as social support, mating, socializing, job success, and attraction to desirable features, may influence how we make these connections.
Most of the time, people tend to be more connected with people that share the same characteristics or personality as them, as it makes it easier to relate with each other. Interestingly, apart from having the same favorites, philosophy in life, or interests, people may also tend to form friendships with individuals who have a similar body odor. This is one of the main findings from the study conducted by researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science.
The premise of the study mentioned above is that nonhuman terrestrial mammals regularly sniff themselves and each other and determine who is a friend or foe based on this. The researchers, therefore, proposed the hypothesis that rapid friendship development in humans may be facilitated by similarity in body odor. The study’s findings, published in Science Advances, raise the possibility that the sense of smell has a more significant impact on human social relationships than previously believed.
Every dog owner who walks their pets knows that their canine companions can typically determine whether an approaching dog is a friend or adversary from a distance. When in doubt, the two dogs may cautiously and explicitly smell each other when they first come into contact before determining whether to engage in play or go to fight. In all terrestrial mammals outside humans, the prominent role of smell in social interactions has been well-documented.
The Weizmann Institute of Science researchers, therefore, sought to determine whether a similar relationship occurs among people. They made use of two earlier observations. First, several lines of evidence point to the fact that people continuously, albeit mainly unconsciously, smell themselves. Second, people frequently sniff one another unconsciously.
Additionally, it is well known that people like to make friends with those who resemble them in terms of looks, upbringing, ideals, and even physiological traits like brain activity. The scientists put forth the theory that people may be subconsciously comparing their own and other people’s smells, leading them to gravitate toward others whose scents are similar to their own.
The researchers enlisted pairs of click friends—same-sex, nonromantic friends—whose relationships had developed quickly in the past to test their theory. They argued that since these friendships form before deeper acquaintanceships, physiological characteristics like body odor may have a special influence on them. The researchers then took samples of body odor from these click pals, doing two rounds of tests to compare them to samples taken from pairs of people at random. She conducted the comparison in one set of studies using eNose, which evaluated the chemical signatures of the scents. On the other hand, they requested that volunteers smell the samples of body odor from the two groups to compare them using human perception.
In both types of experiments, click friends were found to smell significantly more like each other than did the individuals in the random pairs.
Then, to rule out the notion that click friendships were the sole cause of body odor similarity rather than a supplementary one. The volunteers were invited to engage in nonverbal social interactions in pairs after being “smelled” by the researchers using an eNose on a group of strangers. Following these pre-planned interactions, the participants rated the other person based on how much they liked them and how probable they would become friends.
Following the investigation, it was discovered that, according to the eNose, the people who interacted more positively smelled more alike. In fact, using only the data from the eNose sensor, the researchers could predict with 71% accuracy which two individuals would engage in fruitful social interactions.
In other words, body odor appears to contain information that can predict the quality of social interactions between strangers.
The study’s findings imply that our nose has a more significant influence on our choice of friends than was previously believed. We may also share more similarities with other terrestrial mammals in this regard than we normally realize. Beyond providing a better knowledge of human behavior, the study argued that this message is crucial because it may suggest brand-new olfactory-based avenues for social impairment treatments. By mentioning the convergence of several studies that suggest that human same-sex nonromantic click friends smell more similar to one another than would be predicted by chance and that strangers who smell more similar to one another as determined by an eNose have better dyadic interactions, the study concluded that there is indeed chemistry in social chemistry.
Ravreby, I., Snitz, K., & Sobel, N. (2022). There is chemistry in Social Chemistry. Science Advances, 8(25). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn0154
