Actually, your shit might not stink—if you’re surrounded by your people

(credit: aqua.mech)

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But a sweaty human by any other college-affiliation than your own might smell far more sour.

In two experiments, researchers found that college students asked to sniff sweaty t-shirts were significantly more disgusted if they thought the funk originated from someone at a rival school rather than their own. The findings, reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlight the importance of social groupings in our perceptions. Namely, social groups help make individuals more tolerant of personal pew—improving team work—as well as create perceived barriers to collaboration with non-group members.

“More fundamentally, the studies remind us that groups involve not only a gathering of minds but also of sweaty, smelly, tactile bodies,” the authors conclude. “It is impossible to work with people if you cannot stand their physical presence. Accordingly, understanding of how group life is possible will necessarily remain incomplete without attention to the sensual dimension.”

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