Can People Smell Happiness?

A study recently presented at the Association for Psychological Science annual convention revealed some interesting findings about emotional smells. Apparently the closer that partners are to each other, the more they are able to actually smell the partner’s emotions.

Denise Chen, a psychologist with Rice University in Houston, Texas led the study that worked with 20 couples that had been living together from one to seven years. The subjects were a mix of married and unmarried couples. As the participants watched videos, they wore underarm pads that collected sweat.

The videos were a mix of emotionally charged footage, both positive and negative, and neutral videos. Emotions tested for included happiness, fear, sexual arousal as well as neutral feelings.

The underarm pads were collected and placed in jars. Volunteers were asked to smell four jars, some with sweat from their partners and some with sweat from strangers. Each set of four jars contained one pad that was collected after an emotionally charged video and three from the neutral footage. The volunteers were to identify the emotion as the researchers asked, such as finding the one that smelled of happiness.

The results were that subjects could identify specific emotions from the odors almost two-thirds of the time. Accuracy went up the longer the couple had been together. Even with strangers, there was a 50% accuracy level at identifying emotions through scent alone.

Chen told ScienceNews that “familiarity with a partner enhances detection of emotional cues in that person’s smell”.

The results of the study raise some interesting points. Does the scent of emotions help to enable the almost sixth sense that some long time couples seem to exhibit? Perhaps along with the facial cues and body language, we have also learned to subconsciously read our partner’s emotional state through their particular scent, as well.