How a person smells can offer cues to their personality traits

Washington, Dec 4 (ANI): A person can get a hint of another individual's personality through his or her scent alone, a new study has claimed.

Agnieszka Sorokowska and his colleagues from the University of Wroclaw, asked 30 men and 30 women to don white cotton t-shirts for three consecutive nights.

The participants could not use fragrances, deodorants or soaps, and could not smoke or drink or eat odorous foods during the study. They also took a personality test.

Shirts from the "odor donors" were collected and rated by 100 men and 100 women. Raters were asked to smell the shirts, which were placed in non-transparent plastic bags, and evaluate five personality traits of the donors, on a scale of one to 10. Each rater assessed six shirts, and each shirt was assessed by 20 raters.

The judges' ratings matched up with the self-assessments of the donors for three personality traits - extroversion (the tendency to be outgoing and sociable) neuroticism (the tendency to feel anxious and moody) and dominance (the urge to be a leader).

According to Sorokowska, the matches were far from perfect, but the raters predicted the donor's level of extroversion and neuroticism through smell about as accurately as participants in a different study predicted personality traits based on a video depicting a person's behavior.

The researchers also said that judgements of dominance were most accurate in the case where an individual rater was assessing the odour of someone who was the opposite sex, suggesting such judgments are especially important when it comes to choosing a mate, the researchers said.

Extroversion, neuroticism and dominance are all traits that may, to some extent, be expressed physiologically, including through our emotions.

For instance, people who are neurotic may sweat more when they experience stress, which would modify the bacteria in their underarms and make them smell different, the researchers said.

Personality traits may also be linked with the secretion of hormones that could alter a persons' scent. People who are high in dominance may have higher levels of testosterone, which in turn may modify their sweat glands, the researchers said.

The study will be published in the European Journal of Personality. (ANI)

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