We observed that dyads who smelled more similar had more positive dyadic interactions. In other words, we could predict social bonding with an electronic nose. We conclude that there is indeed chemistry in social chemistry. Nonhuman terrestrial mammals constantly sniff themselves and each other and, based on this, decide who is friend or foe ( 20). Humans also constantly sniff themselves ( 21, 22) and each other ( 22– 25). Similarity in the sniffed body odor can infer kinship with self ( 26, 27) or between strangers ( 26, 28). Moreover, growing evidence implies that humans can infer from body odor alone emotional states in conspecifics, ranging from fear ( 29) to happiness ( 30). Given that a friend’s body odor and one’s own body odor induce similar patterns of brain activity, yet exposure to a stranger’s body odor induces a very different limbic fear–type brain response ( 31), we hypothesized that similarity in body odor may contribute to rapid friendship formation. To test this, we first asked whether click friends indeed smell alike. After recruiting same-sex nonromantic click friends and harvesting their body odor, we found that both an analytical device (an electronic nose) and independent human smellers converged to rate the body odors of click friends as more similar than those of random dyads. ![]() Moreover, we next used the electronic nose (eNose) to predict social interactions between strangers. We found that strangers whose body odor was more similar were more prone to later positive dyadic social interaction. Thus, we conclude that similarity in human body odor is related to a mechanism involved in friendship formation. We hypothesized that if body odor similarity plays a role in friendship formation, then this should be particularly pronounced in click friendships, where a sense of friendship was formed before extensive biographical information was exchanged ( 3). Although clicking is indeed a term used in the context of friendship, we are unaware of a formal definition for it in the literature. To define click friendship, in study 1, 235 participants (135 women, aged between 20 and 43 years, M = 26.35 ± 4.166) were asked to define what click friendship is in their own words. ![]() ![]() Only 10 of 235 participants said they did not know what click friendship is. That 225 of 235 participants had a clear notion of what we were asking about further supports that click friendship is a real social event, despite the lack of formal definition.
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