Unwanted body odor is quite a turn off. But what makes someone smell good or not? And what is the function of body odor?
Jasper de Groot is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of social, health and organizational psychology at Utrecht University. He investigates the relationship between smell and emotions.
“Scent tells you:can I approach something or someone or should I leave?” he says. “When something smells sweet and good, we know:this is healthy, we can eat this. If something smells bad or bad, we know:this makes us sick, let's leave this alone. With body odors there is another function, namely social communication.”
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“Scent, for example, is a means with which you can warn someone:watch out, there is danger! The advantage of scent is that you can say something while you are no longer there, because your body can give off a certain scent that can linger in a room. Another advantage of scent is that you can also use it in a dark or noisy environment. You may not be able to hear or see each other, but you can smell it.”
“Several studies have shown that we can pick up the smell of anxious people in a subconscious, indirect way. The same seems to apply to disgust and euphoria. So we can not only see emotions, but also smell them.”
Read more about body odor? You can find a complete file about it in the February issue of Santé.
Source:Santé February, text:Fleur Baxmeier
