RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Sniffing Out New Friends: Similarity in Body-Odor Predicts the Quality of Same-Sex Non-Romantic Dyadic Interactions
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.06.14.448352
DO 10.1101/2021.06.14.448352
A1 Ravreby, Inbal
A1 Snitz, Kobi
A1 Sobel, Noam
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/06/17/2021.06.14.448352.abstract
AB Most are familiar with the notion of socially “clicking” with someone, namely sensing an immediate bond that can lead to strong and often long-lasting friendships. The mechanisms underlying such rapid bonding remain unclear. Given that body-odor similarity is a critical cue for social interaction in non-human mammals, we tested the hypothesis that body-odor similarly contributes to bonding in same-sex non-romantic human dyads. We observed that objective ratings obtained with an electronic nose, and subjective ratings obtained from human smellers, converged to suggest that click-friends smell more similar to each other than random dyads. Remarkably, we then found that we could use the electronic nose to predict which strangers would later form better dyadic interactions. Thus, humans may literally sniff-out new friends based on similarities in body-odor.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.