If two people have similar body odor, they will probably get along right away. This is shown by a series of experiments conducted by Inbal Raffrebi, Kobi Snitz and Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. They published the results in the journal Science Advances..
Experts were interested in what exactly characterizes friendships where there is a special intimacy from the start – spontaneous soulmates where things “click” instantly. To do this, the researchers selected ten male and ten female friends who met their criteria. In total, they tested 40 people. Everyone wore T-shirts and washed with unscented soap for two nights. Then they packed the garments airtight and stored them in the freezer until laboratory analysis.
Sobel and his team submitted the T-shirts prepared to a prosthetic nose, which analyzed scents based on the chemical composition of scent molecules. The exhalations of friendly couples were more similar than those randomly selected and compared. Electron olfactory bulb assessments were also confirmed by 24 human noses.
But can you predict if two strangers will hit him just by looking at their body odor? To do this, the scientists collected the scents of 17 other volunteers. Then the participants played a simple introductory game in pairs without talking to each other. After “inhaling” they answered: did we “click” between them or not? Again, body odor was more similar between couples who immediately liked each other. In addition, the artificial nose was able to predict a 67 percent infection rate of whether two participants would get along well with each other. However, Raphrebi, Snitz, and Sobel did not follow up on whether true “click” friendships developed during the pilot lesson.
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