Posted on 07/03/2009 8:54:59 AM PDT by MyTwoCopperCoins
LONDON: The smell of fear really does exist, according to a new study, which also suggests that being terrified is infectious.
The study, conducted by Dr Bettina Pause and colleagues at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, suggests that people subconsciously detect whether others are scared by picking up chemicals they release from their bodies.
Researchers believe the signals can be contagious and can spread around a group.
For the study, researchers put cotton pads under the armpits of 49 student volunteers before they were due to start a university exam, reports the Telegraph.
Pause and colleagues also collected sweat from the same group of students as they worked out on exercise bikes.
They asked another group of 28 volunteer students to sniff the cotton pads while their brains were monitored with an MRI scanner.
None were able to tell the difference between 'panic sweat' and 'exercise sweat' but the brain scans told a different story.
When sniffing 'panic sweat', the researchers found that the regions of the brain that handle emotional and social signals became far more active. Parts of the brain involved in empathy also lit up.
The researchers reckon that fear and anxiety trigger the release of a chemical that makes other people empathise.
The study has been published in the science journal PLoS One.
Yeah, and everyone is at risk for AIDS.
Now, that's dedication to science.
Or a buck.
“suggests that being terrified is infectious.”
No kidding. Been identified as a “line of sight disease” for years.
Sounds like BS to me.
Those who panic and induce panic in others arent sniffing, they are encouraging others to run by their own behavior.
having an apiary, I will testify to that fact. There is a fear pheromone.
Fear and consternation to the enemy.
Well I for one think this may be real. Dogs supposedly can sense weakness, maybe through pheromones in part.
I don't think it has anything to do with empathy, however. I think it is an evolved ability that relates to predation.
My grandfather-in-law was a big time beekeeper, and he always told us that the bees could smell fear.
My experience tells me he was right. I think they also learn the smell of their own keepers. If somebody is obviously nervous I'll tell them to stay away from the hives. If they are calm they can walk down with me, but I watch the outpost bees to see if they're REALLY calm or just faking it.
Grandfather-in-law always worked his bees without gloves and on good days (the right weather, bees working hard) he didn't even bother with a veil. I suit up if I'm going in deep, but if I'm just checking I'll throw on a veil. Always use LOTS of smoke though (that was his no. 1 recommendation -- "smoke 'em. Then smoke 'em some more. Then wait a little and smoke 'em again!")
My Dobermans could certainly smell fear. They were much more aggressive with people who were scared of them and very gentle with infants who had no fear of them. However, dogs’ sense of smell is probably 1000x more sensitive than humans’.
My guess is that humans might be able to smell fear pheromones only under certain conditions (e.g., the pheromones are very abundant and the “smeller” is in a state where he is very sensitive to such smells).
Yes, my father kept bees when I was young and taught me not to be afraid of them, but to kept my friends away from the hives. I often got stung, because I went barefoot and stepped on them in the clover.
This is probably true.
Back in the mid-60s, when I was in college, I took a psych class. In the first week of the class, we were all given new t-shirts and told to wear them for one week without washing; then they collected them and stored them away in sealed canning jars. Towards the end of the course they brought out the numbered jars and told us to each identify our own t-shirt by smell. Sounds gross doesn’t it. The amazing part was that everyone in the class correctly identified their own smell.
I occasionally stepped on a bee barefoot myself. My dad would always say, “Well you can hardly blame her, you squished her! It was self defense!”
Empathy means :
1. Direct identification with, understanding of, and vicarious experience of another person's situation, feelings, and motives.2. The projection of one's own feelings or emotional state onto an object or animal.
In this sense it is the absolutely correct word and it would be a useful thing survival-wise. One animal sees something that makes it afraid and others around it are aroused (via this pheremonic trigger reaction in the brain) in the same way even without needing to see the source of danger themselves.
That would completely relate to predation.
I used to keep bees. I read that there are two pheromones that bees communicate with (or at least 2 that beekeepers need to care about). One is the “I’m being killed here, help me!” and the other is “Sting here!” This is why you want to be careful putting the hive back together—you kill a bee and it’s going to upset her sisters. It is also why, if you get stung once, you are likely to get nailed several times.
I read somewhere that these odors smell like banana and nail polish remover and that an old beekeeper trick was to feed a beginner bananas before working a hive.
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