Chapter 1. Do Body Smells Reveal Fear and Happiness?

Short Description

This video segment explores whether body odor reflects mood. Male and female student volunteers at the University of Warwick begin the study by washing with unscented soap and then changing into new t-shirts. In the first part of the experiment, the students observe a series of “feel-good” film clips.

Long Description

This video segment explores whether body odor reflects mood. Male and female student volunteers at the University of Warwick begin the study by washing with unscented soap and then changing into new t-shirts. In the first part of the experiment, the students observe a series of “feel-good” film clips. The students appear happy as they watch the programs, and after 20 minutes their t-shirts have presumably picked up their body odor. After a quick wash under the arms, they put on fresh t-shirts. This time the volunteers watch programs intended to elicit fear. Again they change shirts. Shirts are placed in six bags sorted by gender and emotion. Two of the bags hold plain shirts. The students are instructed to sniff and categorize each bag of shirts. They report the task to be challenging. The results indicated that males were very good at recognizing females and females were successful in recognizing males. In addition, males were able to detect the specific moods of females but not those of other males. Similarly, females could pick up the moods of males but not of other females. The researcher concludes that the results provide some evidence that smells can be picked up as messages.

Questions