Turns out that our smell sends communication signals

A Loos-lead team reports that “Although chemical signaling is an essential mode of communication in most vertebrates, it has long been viewed as having negligible effects in humans. However, a growing body of evidence shows that the sense of smell affects human behavior in social contexts ranging from affiliation and parenting to disease avoidance and social threat. . . . social volatiles [scents] affect communication in various domains of human social life, including cooperation, mate choice, parenting, and emotional state. . . . the perception of social volatiles is subject to high inter- and intraindividual variation based on . . . factors such as personality and actual mental state, in addition to evolutionary mechanisms ultimately affecting all human beings. . . . social chemical cues show complex integration with other sensory modalities, modulating or even overruling inputs from the other modalities. Finally, social volatiles are processed in social and emotional brain areas.”

Helene Loos, Benoist Schall, Bettina Pause, Minique Smeets, Camille Ferdenzi, S. Roberts, Jasper De Groot, Katrin Lubke, Ilona Croy, Jessica Freiherr, Moustafa Bensafi, Thomas Hummel, and Jan Havlicek. 2023. “Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research.”  Perspectives on Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231188147