Roberts S Craig, Třebická Fialová Jitka, Sorokowska Agnieszka, Langford Ben, Sorokowski Piotr, Třebický Vít, Havlíček Jan
Division of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK.
Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
Evol Hum Sci. 2022 Oct 10;4:e44. doi: 10.1017/ehs.2022.44. eCollection 2022.
Recent work has demonstrated that human body odour alters with changing emotional state and that emotionally laden odours can affect the physiology and behaviour of people exposed to them. Here we review these discoveries, which we believe add to a growing recognition that the human sense of smell and its potential role in social interactions have been underappreciated. However, we also critically evaluate the current evidence, with a particular focus on methodology and the interpretation of emotional odour studies. We argue that while the evidence convincingly indicates that humans retain a capacity for olfactory communication of emotion, the extent to which this occurs in ordinary social interaction remains an open question. Future studies should place fewer restrictions on participant selection and lifestyle and adopt more realistic experimental designs. We also need to devote more consideration to underlying mechanisms and to recognise the constraints that these may place on effective communication. Finally, we outline some promising approaches to address these issues, and raise some broader theoretical questions that such approaches may help us to answer.
最近的研究表明，人体气味会随着情绪状态的变化而改变，充满情感的气味会影响接触到这些气味的人的生理和行为。在此，我们回顾这些发现，我们认为这些发现进一步证明了人们越来越认识到人类的嗅觉及其在社交互动中的潜在作用一直未得到充分重视。然而，我们也对当前的证据进行了批判性评估，特别关注方法学以及对情感气味研究的解读。我们认为，虽然证据令人信服地表明人类保留了通过嗅觉传达情感的能力，但这种情况在普通社交互动中发生的程度仍是一个悬而未决的问题。未来的研究应该减少对参与者选择和生活方式的限制，并采用更现实的实验设计。我们还需要更多地考虑潜在机制，并认识到这些机制可能对有效沟通造成的限制。最后，我们概述了一些解决这些问题的有前景的方法，并提出了一些更广泛的理论问题，这些方法可能有助于我们回答这些问题。
