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A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking

Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individual to another is unknown. In turn, humans greet each other with handshakes, but the functional antecedents of this behavior remain unclear. To ask whether handshakes are used to sample conspecific socia...

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Autores principales: Frumin, Idan, Perl, Ofer, Endevelt-Shapira, Yaara, Eisen, Ami, Eshel, Neetai, Heller, Iris, Shemesh, Maya, Ravia, Aharon, Sela, Lee, Arzi, Anat, Sobel, Noam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345842/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25732039
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05154
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author Frumin, Idan
Perl, Ofer
Endevelt-Shapira, Yaara
Eisen, Ami
Eshel, Neetai
Heller, Iris
Shemesh, Maya
Ravia, Aharon
Sela, Lee
Arzi, Anat
Sobel, Noam
author_facet Frumin, Idan
Perl, Ofer
Endevelt-Shapira, Yaara
Eisen, Ami
Eshel, Neetai
Heller, Iris
Shemesh, Maya
Ravia, Aharon
Sela, Lee
Arzi, Anat
Sobel, Noam
author_sort Frumin, Idan
collection PubMed
description Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individual to another is unknown. In turn, humans greet each other with handshakes, but the functional antecedents of this behavior remain unclear. To ask whether handshakes are used to sample conspecific social chemosignals, we covertly filmed 271 subjects within a structured greeting event either with or without a handshake. We found that humans often sniff their own hands, and selectively increase this behavior after handshake. After handshakes within gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own right shaking hand by more than 100%. In contrast, after handshakes across gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own left non-shaking hand by more than 100%. Tainting participants with unnoticed odors significantly altered the effects, thus verifying their olfactory nature. Thus, handshaking may functionally serve active yet subliminal social chemosignaling, which likely plays a large role in ongoing human behavior. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05154.001
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spelling pubmed-43458422015-03-05 A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking Frumin, Idan Perl, Ofer Endevelt-Shapira, Yaara Eisen, Ami Eshel, Neetai Heller, Iris Shemesh, Maya Ravia, Aharon Sela, Lee Arzi, Anat Sobel, Noam eLife Neuroscience Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individual to another is unknown. In turn, humans greet each other with handshakes, but the functional antecedents of this behavior remain unclear. To ask whether handshakes are used to sample conspecific social chemosignals, we covertly filmed 271 subjects within a structured greeting event either with or without a handshake. We found that humans often sniff their own hands, and selectively increase this behavior after handshake. After handshakes within gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own right shaking hand by more than 100%. In contrast, after handshakes across gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own left non-shaking hand by more than 100%. Tainting participants with unnoticed odors significantly altered the effects, thus verifying their olfactory nature. Thus, handshaking may functionally serve active yet subliminal social chemosignaling, which likely plays a large role in ongoing human behavior. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05154.001 eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2015-03-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4345842/ /pubmed/25732039 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05154 Text en © 2015, Frumin et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Frumin, Idan
Perl, Ofer
Endevelt-Shapira, Yaara
Eisen, Ami
Eshel, Neetai
Heller, Iris
Shemesh, Maya
Ravia, Aharon
Sela, Lee
Arzi, Anat
Sobel, Noam
A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking
title A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking
title_full A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking
title_fullStr A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking
title_full_unstemmed A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking
title_short A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking
title_sort social chemosignaling function for human handshaking
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345842/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25732039
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05154
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