Friends at first sniff: people drawn to others who smell like them, study shows
- The odour signatures of non-romantic pairs who ‘clicked’ matched more closely than those of non-friends, researchers found
- Such ‘chemistry’ could also predict how much strangers liked and felt they understood each other after meeting for the first time
It’s often said that people who click right away share “chemistry”.
This expression could be true in the literal sense, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances on Friday, which finds people with similar body odours are more likely to hit it off as friends.
“Non-human terrestrial mammals constantly sniff themselves and each other and, based on this, decide who is friend or foe,” wrote a group of researchers led by Inbal Ravreby at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Since people seek friends who are similar to themselves, the team hypothesised that humans may smell themselves and others to subconsciously estimate body odour similarity and judge their compatibility.
To find out, they set about collecting samples from pairs of same-sex, non-romantic friends who described themselves as having clicked at first sight, that is to say “where a sense of friendship was formed before extensive biographical information was exchanged”, according to the paper.
