A latest study suggests that people with bad body odor get more sympathy and help from others.
Belgium researchers stated that people help smelly individuals out of kindness and empathy towards them.
The researchers conducted three trials to know the kind of feelings bad body smells conjured.
For the first test, the researchers told the participants to sniff T-shirts sprayed with human sweat, beer and other bad smells. They were told to imagine that the T-shirt belonged to one of their colleagues and reported their feelings toward the person.
Participants reported they empathised with the people even more after smelling the stinky T-shirt.
In the second trial, the participants were told to finish a maze alone. Later, for another maze, they were made to complete it while sitting next to a person wearing either a neutral or bad smelling T-shirt. Then, these participants were put in third room and told to distribute credits among themselves and person wearing the T-shirt. People who received more credits had higher chances of winning free movie tickets.
Participants gave more credits to the people wearing the stinky T-shirt compared to the one who wore a neutral T-shirt.
According to the study authors, the research "showed that there are situations in which a person's unpleasant body odor increases others' helping behaviors toward this person".
After the third trial, the authors concluded that participants helped those who were not responsible for their body odour but were less helpful towards those responsible for their body odor.
"Scents are omnipresent in our daily world and they are of great importance as represented by the use of perfumes or fragrances in the work environment," said lead author Jeroen Camps and colleagues, from the university KU Leuven in Belgium, according to Daily Mail.
"Even though it has been argued that bad scents invoke negative judgments, we argued and demonstrated that a bad body odor elicits feelings of pity in others and increases prosocial behavior," he added.
