Sometimes a science story isn’t significant to me, it just catches my attention. Catherine de Lange reports on the observations of shaking hands in NewScientist (7 March 2015) in “After handshakes, we sniff people’s scent on our hand” (print: “Shake hands, sniff palm, read signals“) (paywall):
YOU won’t believe you do it, but you do. After shaking hands with someone, you will lift your hands to your face and take a deep sniff. This newly discovered behaviour, revealed by covert filming, suggests that humans use bodily smells to send signals, much as other mammals do. …
After shaking hands with someone of the same sex, both men and women sniffed their shaking hand for more than twice as long as they did before the handshake. If the person was of the opposite sex, they smelled their other hand twice as long as before (eLife, doi.org/2jz). …
One surprise was just how much the volunteers smelled their hands. “When we were coding the videos we would see people sniffing themselves just like rats,” says Sobel. “It’s like blindsight – you see it all the time but you just don’t think of it.”
Now I’ll just sit here and squirm a bit.
