“smell” fear on each other, although in
casual, non-scientific conversation,
we tend to talk about it in terms of
predators smelling fear on their prey.
That’s a misunderstanding of the phe-
nomenon. What happens is that prey
animals unknowingly emit what are
known as alarm pheromones, airborne
chemical cues intended to silently
warn other members of their species,
alerting them to nearby predators and
other potential dangers.
Several studies have pointed to the
possibility that humans, too, can signal
their fears to one another by chemical
means, through our sweat. Two of those
studies showed that test subjects were
able to distinguish between the sweat
of a person who was watching a scary
movie and a person who was watching
something non-frightening. Another
found that subjects who had smelled
the sweat of scary-movie-watchers
demonstrated heightened cognition in
the presence of a potential threat. Still
more studies found an increased star-
tle response in people who’d been
exposed to someone else’s fear-sweat,
as well as a higher likelihood of per-
ceiving facial expressions as fearful
or negative. The takeaway was clear:
people who had smelled another
human’s fear-sweat were primed for
a fear response of their own.rd.ca 89