Abstract
Human sweat odor serves as social communication signal for a person's traits and emotional states. This study explored whether body odors can also communicate information about one's self-esteem, and the role of applied fragrance in this relationship. Female participants were asked to rate self-esteem and attractiveness of different male contestants of a dating show, while being exposed to male participant's body odors differing in self-esteem. High self-esteem sweat was rated more pleasant and less intense than low self-esteem sweat. However, there was no difference in perceived self-esteem and attractiveness of male contestants in videos, hence explicit differences in body odor did not transfer to judgments of related person characteristics. When the body odor was fragranced using a fragranced body spray, male contestants were rated as having higher self-esteem and being more attractive. The finding that body odors from male participants differing in self-esteem are rated differently and can be discriminated suggests self-esteem has distinct perceivable olfactory features, but the remaining findings imply that only fragrance affect the psychological impression someone makes. These findings are discussed in the context of the role of body odor and fragrance in human perception and social communication.
Highlights
We examined for the first time whether self-esteem is a cue that can be inferred from body odor, and second, whether such signal changes social impressions
The present study investigated the social chemosignaling of self-esteem, according to which people with a high vs. low self-esteem produce perceivably different body odors that impact on social impressions related to self-esteem
Employing a sender-receiver paradigm, the data showed that female perceivers rated the body odors of male senders with high self-esteem as more pleasant and intense than body odors of male senders with low self-esteem, confirming the distinctiveness of body odor related to levels of self-esteem
Summary
The ability to signal another person’s non-verbal cues is considered functional social behavior. An individual’s emotional expressivity may signal cooperative behavior and trustworthiness [1], and receives more valuable social investments which in turn can benefit the social group at large on the longer term [2]. Information acquired via non-verbal communication promotes a more effective decision-making process by including whether these expensive individual investments in others are warranted [3]. This phenomenon is illustrated by the observation that people can judge personality traits predictive of future behavior from a face on first sight [e.g., 4–6], the tone of their voice [e.g., 7], or by the feel of a handshake [e.g., 8].
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