As far as your nose is concerned, the old adage “opposites attract” couldn’t be further from the truth, a new study suggests. The research, published [June 24] in Science Advances, suggests that people whose natural body odors are chemically similar are more likely to “click” and form fast friendships.
Through a series of experiments designed to uncover the effects of body odor on social dynamics, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel found that existing pairs of same-sex, nonromantic friends who reported having clicked when they first met emitted similar odors. Additionally, a sensor that the study describes as an “electronic nose” was able to predict above chance levels whether strangers would feel a click upon meeting, based on the chemical signature of their natural body odors.
“I feel comfortable to conclude now that there is chemistry in social chemistry,” study coauthor and Weizmann neurobiologist Inbal Ravreby tells The Scientist.
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“It is worth noting that this paper has several experiments, but the overall number of people involved is rather limited, and limited to a specific case” designed by the study authors, Valentina Parma, a psychologist studying olfaction at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia who didn’t work on the study, tells The Scientist over email. “These results provide a good starting point to answer additional questions.”
