Dr Michelle Dickinson: Subconsciously, we sniff each other when we meet new people

An odd one this week that involves sniffing your friends. Instant friends are those people that you meet where you have an instant connection – like you have already been friends for years. Previous research has found that, subconsciously, we sniff each other when we meet new people and researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel wondered if that sniffing had a purpose. The research was published this week in the Journal Science Advances  They recruited 20 pairs of same-sex, non-romantic friends who claimed they had clicked straight away when they first met. They then used an electronic nose to detect the chemical components of odours emitted off T-shirts that the participants were wearing.  The nose found that the body odour was much more similar between friend pairs than between random pairs of people. They then repeated the test with human noses and the sniffers reported to thinking the t-shirts of friends smelled more similar too. They then carried out another experiment with 17 people who had never met before.  Using the electronic nose to analyse their body odours, they then asked the volunteers to play a non-verbal mimicking game with a volunteer of the same sex. Afterwards, they asked the volunteers to state if they felt like they 'clicked' with any of the other participants. The results showed that those who smelled more like each other were more likely to report feeling as if they clicked during the game. For those of you who are thinking that you might want to use this science to sniff out your long-term sexual partner, don't!  Research shows that heterosexual people seem to be attracted to partners that smell different to them, with one study finding that women are more attracted to odours of men with different immune genes to them – possible helping to produce offspring with robust immune systems. Anyone who has a dog knows that some mammals use smell to determine who is a friend or foe, but thankfully we humans don't need to head to the butt area to make these subconscious decisions. Dr Michelle Dickinson joined Francesca Rudkin. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.