Are you having a hard time keeping that smiley face? Do you feel down recently? Perhaps all you need to do is to smell the sweat of a happy person.
In one of the weirdest types of news of the day, a new study conducted by a team of Utrecht University researchers in the Netherlands discovered that when sweat is produced when a person is in a very happy state, it can also affect another who gets to smell it positively-that is, he or she becomes happy too.
During the course of the study, the team allowed 12 men to watch a video that invoked different feelings including happiness and anxiety or fear. After doing this, their sweat samples are then collected. A batch of women, who are known to be more acute to the chemo signals produced by sweat, was instructed to sniff the samples while the researchers observed their reactions while doing so.
The researchers then discovered that the women's reactions match the emotions the men felt when the sweat sample has been produced. In other words, if the sweat is created when he was fearful, a section of the brain that is associated with fear is also activated among the women. On the other hand, if the men were happy when such sweat was produced, women brought out their Duchenne smile, in which the muscles around the mouth and the eyes are activated. This is indicative that they were also happy.
To properly explain this phenomenon, the lead author of the study Professor Gun Semin mentioned that the women's exposure to chemo signals representing happiness stimulates the happiness receivers, which then improve their emotional state.
However, before you start sniffing every sweat you encounter or forcing other people to produce it while in a very happy state, know that this is just an initial study, which means more have to be performed to prove the connection between happy sweat and happiness.
