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Your sweat stink is contagious. That is, your happy sweat can also make those around you happy. The Sun Daily reported April 19 that chemical compounds produced while people are happy can be detected by those who smell others’ sweat. Therefore, if you’re happy and you know it. . .go work out (?).
Troels Graugaard via Getty Images
It’s a formula for upping the happiness quotient within friend and family groups, it seems. Gün Semin, senior researcher for the new study which was published earlier this month in Psychological Science said that "In a way, happiness sweat is somewhat like smiling – it is infectious."
This is not to say that your sad sweat won’t make others sad. It can. Studies in the past have pointed out that negative emotions, such as fear and disgust, could be communicated as effectively as a frown by the smell of someone’s body sweat.
Semin stated that the research shows that when others are exposed to the sweat of someone who is happy, a “contagion of the emotional state” is induced. Something in the body’s receptors reacts, subtly causing a change in perception, emotional state and even behavior.
The double blind study called on 12 caucasian men to be “sweat donors.” They watched video clips, amongst other activities, meant to instigate certain emotions while sweat pads under their armpits collected the sweat used in the study. Sweat samples were catalogued according to their emotions of fear, happiness or neutralness. Then, 36 healthy caucasian women (chosen because women are said to have better sniffers and emotional intelligence) were recruited to sniff the various sweat samples.
Researchers watched the women’s facial expressions and found that when they were exposed to “fear sweat”, they showed “greater activity in the medial frontalis muscle, a common feature of fear expressions.” When women sniffed the “happy sweat”, they “showed more facial muscle activity indicative of a Duchenne smile, a common component of happiness expressions.” Though the results were not outright, the findings provide a beginning to more research that suggests that sweat odor can communicate emotions to others especially when emotions have no or little words to back them up (ever have an instance where you are unable to describe how you’re feeling?).
The researchers are already thinking of practical uses for their findings. For example, such knowledge could be commercially beneficial for the “odor industry,” an industry that has already employed the use of pheromones(chemosignals) which not only give away your moods but your your sexual orientation and even your genetic makeup.
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