Smelling the smell of freshly cut grass (hexanal) increases interpersonal trust

Together with his Master’s student Daan van Nieuwenburg and professor Monique Smeets, Jasper de Groot published an article showing the subtle signaling potential of smell in the open access journal Frontiers in Psychology. The two experiments reported in this paper bring new evidence that interpersonal trust can be enhanced by smelling a masked, undetected odorant (hexanal), a compound that is found in everyday smells, like freshly cut grass, but also in body odor.

van Nieuwenburg, D., De Groot, J. H., & Smeets, M. A. (2019). The Subtle Signaling Strength of Smells: A Masked Odor Enhances Interpersonal Trust. Frontiers in psychology10, 1890.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *