The role of fragrance and self-esteem in perception of body odors and impressions of others.

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 frag

SUBMITTER: Croijmans I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8592444 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature