Smells of Happiness, and of Fear
“Rapid Mood Change and Human Odors,” Denise Chen and Jeannette Haviland-Jones, Physiology and Behavior, vol. 68, nos. 1-2, December 1, 1999, pp. 241-50. (Thanks to Enzo Festa for bringing this to our attention.) The authors report:
We demonstrate an immediate effect of airborne chemicals on human moods. We collected six groups of underarm odors, respectively, from five prepubertal girls, five prepubertal boys, five college women, five college men, five older women, and five older men…. [O]dor observers assessed their depressive, hostile, and positive moods twice, once before and once a few minutes after they sniffed one of the above seven groups of odors. Exposure to underarm odors for under 2 min led to significant, rapid, and small changes in the nonclinical depressive mood of the odor observers…. Odors
(That’s an excerpt from the article “Anti-Terrorism,” published in AIR 14:3)