An investigation by the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) has discovered that the masculine scent in a couple can help reduce stress levels.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, indicates that women feel calmer after being exposed to their partner's odor, while the presence of a scent coming from a stranger has the opposite effect of raising levels. of cortisol, the hormone linked to stress.
To reach such a conclusion, the experts recruited 96 heterosexual couples. The men were given a shirt that they had to wear for 24 hours. They should also avoid the use of deodorants and other perfumed products and refrain from smoking or consuming foods that could affect their aroma. Subsequently, the garments were frozen to preserve the smell.
The females, on the other hand, were randomly assigned to smell pieces of new clothes and others worn by their partner or a stranger, without telling them which of these they had given them. Then they underwent stress tests, described their mood and were measured cortisol levels. The university emphasizes that they preferred that it was women who smelled the clothes of their partners because they usually have a sharper sense of smell than that of men.
Finally, it was concluded that women who smelled their partner's shirt unknowingly felt less stressed before and after the tests, and those who were able to identify the fragrance of their partner also had lower levels of the hormone in question. This phenomenon suggests that the benefits of male scent are stronger when women know what they are smelling.
By contrast, those who came across the scent of a stranger maintained high levels of stress during all tests, a result that the authors believe is linked to certain evolutionary factors: "From an early age, humans fear strangers, especially to strange men, so it's possible that an unfamiliar masculine scent triggers the fight or flight response that leads to an increase in cortisol. "
Frances Chen, lead author of the study, points out that "something as simple as wearing a piece of clothing worn by your loved one" could have practical applications to help a person deal with stressful situations when he is away from him.