INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
For their study, Gaby et al
organized an on-campus "Speed-Friending" event for 40 female volunteers, consisting of four distinct phases
First, participants had their headshots taken
Next, they looked at pictures of all the other women participating and rated friendship potential based solely on visual cues
Then the women wore a T-shirt for 12 hours as they went about their daily activities, which were then collected and placed in plastic bags
Finally, participants rated the friendship potential of anonymized participants based solely on smelling each T-shirt, followed by a live
session during which they interacted with each woman for four minutes and rated their friendship potential
This was followed by a second round of smelling the T-shirts and once again rating friendship potential.The results: There was a strong
correlation between the in-person evaluations of friendship potential and those based solely on smelling the T-shirts, with remarkable
And the ratings made after live interactions accurately predicted changes in the assessments made in the final round of odor-based testing,
I might like person A over B over C based on scent, and this pattern predicts who I end up liking in the chat
authors acknowledged that their study was limited to college-aged heterosexual women and that there could be differences in how olfactory
and other cues function in other groups: older or younger women, non-American women, men, and so forth
"Future studies might consider a wider age range, investigate individuals at different stages of development, focus on how these cues
function in male-male platonic interactions, or examine how scent in daily interactions shapes friendship judgments in other cultures," they
wrote.Scientific Reports, 2025
