In many countries, men kiss on the cheek, especially if they are close friends.
It is often said that when people like you immediately it’s because share “chemistry”This expression may be true, in the literal sense, according to a new study published Friday in the paper Science advanceswhose conclusion indicates that people who have similar body odors are more likely to get along.
“Inhuman land mammals constantly smell each other and, based on this, decide who is friend or foe,” wrote a group of researchers led by Inbal Ravreby from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Knowing that people are looking for like-minded friends, the team has advanced into hypothesis that humans could smell themselves and others to unconsciously estimate similarities in body odor and judge their compatibility.
A new study has found that people are more likely to like each other because they smell the same.
To find out, samples collected from same-sex couplesfriends with no romantic interest who have described their relationship as a click at first sight, or as the study calls it, “when the sense of friendship is formed before extensive biographical information is exchanged.”
After an extensive summoning effort, they found 20 pairshalf women and half men, aged between 22 and 39. To prevent external factors from contaminating or influencing the tests, all participants had to follow a strict protocol that provided avoid spicy foods, sleep in cotton shirts and away from their partners or pets.
The shirts were collected in sealed bags and tested with an electronic nose, a device equipped with sensors that analyze chemical compositions. The researchers found that the olfactory signatures of the “friends at first sight” they were statistically closer to matching than non-friends.
“Friends at first sight” have olfactory cues that make them statistically closer to matching than non-friends.
To assess whether the electronic nose is a faithfully replicated human perception, the team summoned by sniffing humans and designed a series of tests to verify the validity of its results. In one of these tests, for example, the volunteers were presented with three smells: two from a compatible pair and one from one that was not. They successfully identified their peers and rejected the incompatible.
These results seem to confirm the hypothesis that similar smells can lead to friendshipbut an alternative explanation was that people who are friends spend a lot of time together and have experiences shaped by similar body odors, such as where they live or what they eat.
To anticipate these two possibilities, the team devised another test to find out whether odor could be a successful predictor that two people who have never met click.
For this, they summoned 17 strangers and made them interact with each other a test called “Mirror Game”, which consists of standing half a meter away so that they can smell each other unconsciously. They were asked to mimic and make other hand movements for two minutes without talking to each other.
The growth rate of friendships peaks at the age of 25, and body odors also play a role.
The chemical similarity in their smells, as tested by the electronic nose, successfully predicted the compatibility in 77% of casesand it also predicted that there would be no clicking on one or the other in 68% of cases. superior chemistry.
In summary, the results of the study “suggest it same-sex friend clicks they smell more similar to each other than one would accidentally expect, “concluded the team.
The Humans, unlike other land mammalsuses complex languages to interact, so it’s possible that the effects of odor in laboratory conditions have been amplified compared to what they might be important in real life, the team wrote.
“However, we believe our findings imply it we may be more like other land mammals than what we commonly believe. ” she closed the studio.
Source: Clarin
