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Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights

Morality evolved within specific social contexts that are argued to shape moral choices. In turn, moral choices are hypothesized to be affected by body odors as they powerfully convey socially-relevant information. We thus investigated the neural underpinnings of the possible body odors effect on th...

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Autores principales: Cecchetto, Cinzia, Lancini, Elisa, Bueti, Domenica, Rumiati, Raffaella Ida, Parma, Valentina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445102/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30940875
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41937-0
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author Cecchetto, Cinzia
Lancini, Elisa
Bueti, Domenica
Rumiati, Raffaella Ida
Parma, Valentina
author_facet Cecchetto, Cinzia
Lancini, Elisa
Bueti, Domenica
Rumiati, Raffaella Ida
Parma, Valentina
author_sort Cecchetto, Cinzia
collection PubMed
description Morality evolved within specific social contexts that are argued to shape moral choices. In turn, moral choices are hypothesized to be affected by body odors as they powerfully convey socially-relevant information. We thus investigated the neural underpinnings of the possible body odors effect on the participants’ decisions. In an fMRI study we presented to healthy individuals 64 moral dilemmas divided in incongruent (real) and congruent (fake) moral dilemmas, using different types of harm (intentional: instrumental dilemmas, or inadvertent: accidental dilemmas). Participants were required to choose deontological or utilitarian actions under the exposure to a neutral fragrance (masker) or body odors concealed by the same masker (masked body odor). Smelling the masked body odor while processing incongruent (not congruent) dilemmas activates the supramarginal gyrus, consistent with an increase in prosocial attitude. When processing accidental (not instrumental) dilemmas, smelling the masked body odor activates the angular gyrus, an area associated with the processing of people’s presence, supporting the hypothesis that body odors enhance the saliency of the social context in moral scenarios. These results suggest that masked body odors can influence moral choices by increasing the emotional experience during the decision process, and further explain how sensory unconscious biases affect human behavior.
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spelling pubmed-64451022019-04-05 Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights Cecchetto, Cinzia Lancini, Elisa Bueti, Domenica Rumiati, Raffaella Ida Parma, Valentina Sci Rep Article Morality evolved within specific social contexts that are argued to shape moral choices. In turn, moral choices are hypothesized to be affected by body odors as they powerfully convey socially-relevant information. We thus investigated the neural underpinnings of the possible body odors effect on the participants’ decisions. In an fMRI study we presented to healthy individuals 64 moral dilemmas divided in incongruent (real) and congruent (fake) moral dilemmas, using different types of harm (intentional: instrumental dilemmas, or inadvertent: accidental dilemmas). Participants were required to choose deontological or utilitarian actions under the exposure to a neutral fragrance (masker) or body odors concealed by the same masker (masked body odor). Smelling the masked body odor while processing incongruent (not congruent) dilemmas activates the supramarginal gyrus, consistent with an increase in prosocial attitude. When processing accidental (not instrumental) dilemmas, smelling the masked body odor activates the angular gyrus, an area associated with the processing of people’s presence, supporting the hypothesis that body odors enhance the saliency of the social context in moral scenarios. These results suggest that masked body odors can influence moral choices by increasing the emotional experience during the decision process, and further explain how sensory unconscious biases affect human behavior. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-04-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6445102/ /pubmed/30940875 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41937-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Cecchetto, Cinzia
Lancini, Elisa
Bueti, Domenica
Rumiati, Raffaella Ida
Parma, Valentina
Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights
title Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights
title_full Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights
title_fullStr Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights
title_full_unstemmed Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights
title_short Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights
title_sort body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445102/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30940875
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41937-0
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