Recent quotes:

Scent: The Hidden Influence on Friendships

The study found that both initial diplomatic odor judgments and brief visual exposure independently predicted friendship potential ratings following live interactions. More notably, the quality of the live interaction predicted changes in how participants rated the same person’s diplomatic odor afterward, suggesting olfactory associations update based on social experiences. Statistical analysis showed these effects were driven primarily by idiosyncratic preferences (approximately 45-47% of variance) rather than by universal perceiver or target effects. This indicates that personal, unique preferences drive friendship formation more than generally agreed-upon characteristics. The researchers found that diplomatic odor cues may be even more influential than visual cues in predicting live interaction judgments, though they caution against over-interpreting this comparison due to methodological differences between the visual and olfactory judgment conditions.