Studies Reveal Humans Smell Fear, Feel Emotional Coldness

Why is rejecting someone called “giving them the cold shoulder”? Research on how temperature and scent affect relationships sheds new light on an old cliché.

Three studies presented at the 2010 convention of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston illustrate that social relationships depend upon a number of cues, including scent and temperature.

Research by Gun R. Semin of Utrecht University, the Netherlands, may explain why all-inclusive resorts for singles are usually found in the tropics, instead of the Arctic. His work revealed the correlation between temperature and social judgments. Subjects in a warm room rated others as more intelligent and more sociable. Subjects in a cooler room rated the same behavior as less intelligent and less sociable. The higher ratings applied to characters in written narratives, and to those encountered in person, including the experimenter.

This research supports a 2008 study showing that participants felt colder when asked to recall a memory of social isolation, while those recalling happy memories estimated the room temperature as warmer. This may explain why being snubbed or rejected is often called “being left out in the cold.” Humans instinctively associate cold with isolation.

Scent also affects relationships, according to Denise Chen of Rice University. Chen collected sweat from men watching erotic videos, and from those engaged in exercise. The emotional centers of women’s brains reacted to the erotic sweat, but not to exercise sweat – indicating that at some level, the women could smell a man’s sexual arousal.

In a separate study, Chen collected fear sweat from men watching horror movies. Women who smelled the fear sweat were more likely to view photos of men with neutral facial expressions as fearful. The scent of sweat produced during exercise did not have the same results.

In one of the most remarkable results, Chen found that couples in a relationship were more accurate in interpreting scent cues from their partner than from a stranger. Couples who had been together longer were the most accurate in interpreting emotion by scent.

Scent can vividly evoke a memory, but it can also trigger recall of factual information, according to Monique Smeets of Utrecht University. Study participants watched an instructional video on parenting in a room scented with the aroma of flowers or fruit. Then they practiced the new skills by caring for a special doll in a separate scented room. The doll, designed to teach teens about responsibility, electronically rated the “parents” on their nurturing skills. When both rooms had the same scent, participants were more likely to recall the new information, and receive a perfect score in nurturing. When the two rooms had a different scent, participants had more trouble recalling information and received lower scores.

By Joni Holderman, [email protected], contributing reporter for Mental Health News.