There are people with whom we instantly click. Just a few minutes are enough to feel a connection, as though we had known each other forever. We call it affinity, rapport, chemistry. But what if that chemistry were, at least in part, real?
In 2022, a team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel published a study in Science Advances titled There is chemistry in social chemistryinvestigating the possible role of body odor in the formation of friendships.
The scientists recruited twenty pairs of same-sex friends who shared a particular experience: both remembered feeling an immediate connection when they first met. These are known as click friendships..
Participants wore T-shirts under carefully controlled conditions to collect samples of their body odor. The researchers then analyzed these samples using an electronic nose, a device capable of detecting different profiles of volatile compounds.
The result? Friends had significantly more similar body odors than randomly paired individuals. Human evaluators also perceived greater similarities between the odors of friends.
But could friendship itself make people smell more alike, perhaps through shared habits and environments? To investigate further, the researchers conducted a second experiment involving strangers who interacted without speaking. Similarities in their body odor profiles were associated with more positive interactions.
A statistical model based on electronic-nose measurements correctly classified approximately 71% of the outcomes of mutual connection within the experimental sample.
This does not prove that we unconsciously choose our friends by smelling them, nor that body odor determines our relationships. However, the study suggests that chemical communication may contribute to the formation of human social bonds.
Among the works of debut fiction exploring scientific themes featured a few months ago in our Science Worth Readingcolumn, we came across Echo,a novel in which scents become the key to recovering memories and emotional connections. While in literary fiction the sense of smell can bring us back to people we have known, scientific research suggests that it might even help explain why certain people feel instantly familiar to us.
Forse, quando diciamo che tra due persone c’è chimica, siamo meno metaforici di quanto crediamo.
