Reacting to Body Odor with Prosocial Behavior?

by bodyodorpsych

Apparently, one study showed that smelling bad can sometimes make people feel pity for the “offender” and encourage prosocial behavior towards them. I’m personally not surprised, though. If a decent human being feels that it is not your fault for smelling bad, then why would they not want to be kind and compassionate towards you?

Here’s the abstract (and link) for the study that I’m referring to:

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. 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 (Experiment 1) and increases prosocial behavior (Experiment 2). Further, we showed that only if a person is not held accountable for his own body odor this elevated other’s prosocial behavior (Experiment 3). These findings provide a novel perspective on the way human body odor affects our perceptions and consequent behaviors.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jasp.12203/abstract

Interesting anecdote:
When I told a lecturer of mine about my problem, one of the first things he said in response is that it must be a nightmare for me. This tells me something about how much people, in general, tend to fear having persistent uncontrollable body odor, which may be why it evokes such feelings of wanting to help the person who actually does have it. After all, if they were to ever have this problem, they would want others to treat them with kindness as well.

For the record, the study may have its flaws, and in no way am I saying that I totally agree with the findings of the study.