If you are somewhat like me, you don’t really fancy smelling other people’s sweat. But if – for whatever reason – life puts you in a situation where you have to: Make sure it’s the sweat of happy people. Why?
Because it just might make you happy (at least: happier), too. A recent study titled A Sniff of Happiness finds that people who are exposed to the body odors of happy people tend to show increasing signs of happiness themselves, e.g., they smile more compared to the time before that “exposure”.
In the words of the researchers:
We observed that exposure to body odor collected from senders of chemosignals in a happy state induced a facial expression and perceptual-processing style indicative of happiness in the receivers of those signals. Our findings suggest that not only negative affect but also a positive state (happiness) can be transferred by means of odors.
So if you are a happy person: Please throw away that antiperspirant. Make the world a more joyful place… 😉
Mappalicious 