Olfaction as the neglected medium of affective communication
Dogs can smell fear, and now it seems humans can, too. This project examines the role of smell in the communication of emotion. We will investigate how humans communicate emotion via underarm sweat, by testing whether sweat produced by fearful humans leads to fear in the perceiver via the sense of smell. We predict that exposure to fear sweat will lead to increased scanning of the environment as reflected by increased sniffing, faster eye movements, and the facial expression of fear.