As humans, we are constantly navigating social status, using subconscious strategies to assert either our dominance or prestige.
We often use voice or body language to communicate this. Imagine a politician with a slow, booming voice, expanding their chest and extending their arms, quickly asserting authority over their audience.
We also use our sense of smell, according to new research from the University of Victoria (UVic), published in Evolution and Human Behaviour.
"This study examines the role of body odour in people's perceptions of others' social status," says Marlise Hofer, a postdoctoral researcher at UVic.
"We examined whether scent cues associated with levels of circulating testosterone impact people's social status judgments.
"We found that both male and female participants in our study perceived men with higher levels of testosterone to be more dominant than men with lower testosterone levels."
Signalling through scent
Chemical signalling is the most widespread form of communication on earth. Many animals will use scent to express and understand social status within their group. Mice, for example, scent-mark their territory to assert their dominance.
Previous research shows that humans use two different strategies to assert and maintain social status: dominance and prestige. Dominance is coercive, using tactics to force compliance. Prestige, on the other hand, involves showing valuable skills and traits that lead others to show deference voluntarily.
"Research also reveals that scent plays an important role in human communication—of fear, sickness, safety, attraction, and personality traits such as dominance and neuroticism," says Hofer.
"We think this is the first study to directly examine whether humans use scent cues related to circulating testosterone levels in the formation of social status judgements."
Saliva samples and worn shirts
Hofer began the study while working on her PhD under the mentorship of Frances Chen at the Social Health Lab at the University of British Columbia.
She recruited 76 male students, who provided saliva samples, which were used to measure testosterone. They also provided scent samples, on shirts they had worn, and completed a social status questionnaire.
A total of 797 male and female "smellers" participated in rating the scent samples. They rated the scents for perceived dominance and prestige. The smellers also rated the samples for odour quality (defined as intensity, pleasantness and sexiness).
No significant relationship was found between testosterone levels and perceived prestige. Perceptions of dominance on the other hand were associated with higher testosterone levels.
That is, when participants smelled the body odour on shirts of the men who had higher levels of testosterone in their saliva, they consistently rated these men as more dominant than those with lower salivary testosterone.
"This relationship remained significant, after controlling for potential confounding factors," says Hofer. "These include scent positivity, scent intensity, scent donor's ethnicity, self-ratings of dominance, and smeller's sex."
Research into scent and health
"This study contributes to a growing body of work seeking to understand how social communication occurs through scent," says Hofer. "Although we often think of sight and sound as our main social senses, smell also appears to carry subtle but meaningful information about others."
At the same time, the findings should be interpreted with caution. The study involved a relatively small and uniform sample, and replication with larger and more diverse groups will be important to confirm whether these patterns hold.
Exploring the often-overlooked role of smell in social communication has motivated Hofer to examine the psychological and social consequences of smell loss. Her ongoing work explores how olfactory changes, such as those caused by COVID-19, affect relationships, emotional wellbeing, and mental health.
Hofer hopes to develop an evidence-based intervention to help people with smell disorders reconnect with food, social experiences and intimacy through alternative sensory and behavioural strategies.
Learn more about research at the University of Victoria .
This research aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 3 (good health and well-being). Learn more about the SDGs at UVic.
