Want to feel happy?

Take a good long sniff of a happy person’s stinky armpits and you’ll be good to go – joyfully  skipping off into the sunset.

Seriously?

Sometimes during my research for this blog, I run into articles that tickle my funny bone. I mean, they really did a study on this? The answer is yes – it was a legit study published in the journal, Psychological Science.

Visualize serious scientists from the UK, the Netherlands, and Portugal sticking 12 men into a room and showing them clips of happy and scary movies to evoke feelings of joy and fright, and then playing weather forecasts to produce neutral feelings.

Then they collected sweat from those stinky, hairy armpits. Eeew!

Wait, it gets better. Then, 36 lucky female participants were asked to smell the sweat samples with their facial expressions traced by electrical impulses. Eeew again! Did they get paid or were they volunteers? Inquiring minds want to know.

And, by the way, that seems downright sexist to me. Why didn’t the men have to smell the women’s sweat? Isn’t it enough that we females have periods, give birth, and go through menopause?

Okay, NOT fair, but back to the subject at hand. So, according to the results from this fun study, they discovered human body odor contains chemicals known as “chemosignals” which carry information about emotional states.

In other words, they claim that BO controls emotions.

Supposedly, the women who smelled the “happy sweat” showed facial muscle activity associated with a genuine smile.

Really?

So, if you buy into the results of this study and want to boost your happiness levels, just find the happiest person in your vicinity and take a good, strong, whiff of their delightful sweaty armpit and VIOLA! Pure joy!

And if your armpits are so stinky that you make Right Guard turn left, Speed stick slow down, Secret tell all, and Sure confused, as the joke goes – don’t feel bad. In fact, if you’re a happy person, offer your armpits to the nearest depressed person and proudly share the joy.

Just not with me. I’m finding easier ways to boost my happiness levels, thank-you very much!

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net