"By being a guy's best first move … Axe is designed to keep guys a step ahead in the dating game," boasts Unilever, the company that sells Axe products. Of course, if you don't happen to be a gullible 13-year-old boy, you probably don't believe that body spray or deodorant is a magic elixir with the power to turn nice girls naughty. But what if it were possible to change a person’s mood with just a scent?
The idea may not be that far-fetched, according to a new study in the journal Psychological Science - reporting work that was funded by Unilever. The study found that it might be possible to subconsciously trigger a state of happiness using the scent of - deep breath now - human sweat.
People send all kinds of secret messages through their secretions. When smelling chemicals in male sweat, women become more alert, and they can even tell whether that sweat was made by a guy who was particularly turned on. (Cautions the New York Times: "No man should imagine that based on these conclusions he can improve his sex life by refraining from bathing.") But until now, most sweat studies have focused on sexual arousal or negative emotions like fear.
Being able to transmit positive emotions may also have a profound social impact, says Gün Semin, a psychologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and lead researcher on the study.
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Category(s):Happiness
Source material from Slate
