ArticleBehavior research methods2020
The lasting smell of emotions: The effects of reutilizing fear sweat samples.
Article in Behavior research methods, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- A quasi-randomised pilot study on the efficacy and perceived usefulness of adding chemosignals to mindfulness practice for women with social anxiety.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- From female to female: Communication via chemosignals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Unintended VOC emissions from cotton and viscose pads complicate olfactory experiments.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Behaviour of ewes and lambs in response to human emotional odours.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Do sheep (Ovis aries) discriminate human emotional odors?Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Humans can detect axillary odor cues of an acute respiratory infection in others.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- The Function of Fear Chemosignals: Preparing for Danger.Chemical senses · 2021Article
- More Data, Please: Machine Learning to Advance the Multidisciplinary Science of Human Sociochemistry.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A growing body of research has shown that human apocrine sweat carries information about the emotional state of its donor. Exposure to sweat produced in a fear-inducing context triggers in its receivers a simulacrum of this emotional state, as evidenced by increased medial frontalis and corrugator supercilii (facial electromyography; fEMG) activity - two facial muscles involved in the display of fear facial expressions. However, despite the increased interest in the effects of emotional sweat, little is known about the properties of these chemical sweat samples. The goal of this study was to examine whether a second application of the same sweat sample would yield reliable results. Specifically, we assessed whether sweat samples collected from Portuguese males (N = 8) in fear (vs. neutral)-inducing contexts would produce similar fEMG activations (i.e., in the medial frontalis and corrugator supercilii) in female receivers (N = 60) across two independent applications (the first with Dutch and the second with Portuguese receivers). Our findings showed that exposure to fear (vs. neutral) sweat resulted in higher activation of both muscles compared with neutral odors, revealing a similar data pattern across the two applications and underlining the feasibility of reusing emotional sweat samples. The implications of these findings for properties of these sweat volatiles are discussed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.