NWO open competition XS grant for a project on the smell of fear in interpersonal communication

Imagine walking into a room and, without realizing it, sensing fear through smell. The subtle behavioral effects of this are quite extensively uncovered by NOSE members Jasper de Groot and Monique Smeets and others, with lab-based research that show that people can detect fear in body odours. But perceiving the smell could also change how you communicate with others. While it is known that we rely on body language and facial expressions to understand others, smell can also play a role. We receive information about our conversation partner, and our focus in the conversation might be shifted towards other cues and signals. We might also subtly send cues to our conversation partner. Using an NWO open competition XS grant, Ilja Croijmans will combine psycholinguistic experiments and virtual reality interactions during exposure to fear-related smells, to start uncovering the role of chemical communication in communication. This project takes the next step to uncover how smells affect language processing in interactions.