Having trouble sleeping? Nervous about an important interview? Smelling your partner’s worn clothing may help improve your sleep and calm your nerves.
Social Scents and Health
Along with our colleagues at the University of British Columbia, we decided to take a closer look at whether exposure to the scent of our romantic partner might have benefits for our psychological and physical health.Sleep Quality and Scent
In one study, we tested whether sleep quality would be improved by a partner’s scent. We gave each of our 155 participants two identical-looking shirts: one control shirt and one that had been worn by their partner.Each participant was asked to sleep with his or her partner’s shirt as a pillow cover for two nights, and with the other shirt as a pillow cover for another two nights—without knowing which was which. Each morning, participants reported the quality of their sleep the previous night.
We also asked participants to wear a sleep watch that monitored their movement through the night. After the study was over, we asked participants to guess whether each of the shirts had been worn by their partner.
People reported that their sleep was better on nights when they thought they were smelling their partner’s scent. However, data from the sleep watches revealed that people’s sleep efficiency was higher—in other words, they experienced less tossing and turning—on nights they were actually sleeping with their partner’s shirt. This increase in sleep efficiency occurred regardless of whether participants guessed that the shirt was their partner’s. This suggests that the effects of exposure to a partner’s scent can occur outside of our conscious awareness.
Scent and Stress
In another study, we examined whether stress would be reduced by a partner’s scent. We asked 96 women to come into our lab and smell a shirt, either a control shirt or one worn by their romantic partner. They smelled this shirt before, during and after a stressful mock job interview.Women smelling their partner’s shirt reported lower stress both when thinking about the upcoming interview and when recovering from the interview. Those who correctly reported that they were smelling their partner’s scent had lower cortisol reactivity to the stressor. Cortisol is a natural hormone released by the body during stress.
Future Research
In our upcoming research, we plan to investigate other questions about social scents, such as whether people who are happier in their relationships derive greater health benefits from the scent of their partner, and whether the health benefits might extend to other types of close relationships, like parent-child relationships.By understanding how social scents affect health, future studies can examine the efficacy of simple methods to bolster well-being, such as taking a partner’s scarf or shirt along when traveling. The current studies reveal that, often outside of our awareness, another world of communication is happening right under our noses.