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psychology

Can your partner's smell calm you down?

Women who smelled a partner's worn T-shirt felt less stressed (2018), but a partner's scent too faint to notice raised stress and heart rate (2026).

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Sources

Every claim in the video and the article comes from these sources.

  1. Hofer MK, Collins HK, Whillans AV, Chen FS. Olfactory cues from romantic partners and strangers influence women's responses to stress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2018;114(1):1-9
  2. Spengler FB, Doerflinger JT, Noel JA, Ditzen B, Freiherr J, Heinrichs M. Smelling the romantic partner's natural body odor increases psychological and autonomic but not cortisol stress responses. Scientific Reports 2026;16:1760
  3. Hofer MK, Chen FS. The scent of a good night's sleep: olfactory cues of a romantic partner improve sleep efficiency. Psychological Science 2020;31(4):449-459
  4. Granqvist P, Vestbrant K, Döllinger L, et al. The scent of security: odor of romantic partner alters subjective discomfort and autonomic stress responses in an adult attachment-dependent manner. Physiology & Behavior 2019;198:144-150
  5. McBurney DH, Shoup ML, Streeter SA. Olfactory comfort: smelling a partner's clothing during periods of separation. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 2006;36(9):2325-2335
  6. Mahmut MK, Stevenson RJ, Stephen I. Do women love their partner's smell? Exploring women's preferences for and identification of male partner and non-partner body odor. Physiology & Behavior 2019;210:112517
  7. Wyatt TD. The search for human pheromones: the lost decades and the necessity of returning to first principles. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 2015;282:20142994
  8. Hare RM, Schlatter S, Rhodes G, Simmons LW. Putative sex-specific human pheromones do not affect gender perception, attractiveness ratings or unfaithfulness judgements of opposite sex faces. Royal Society Open Science 2017;4:160831
  9. Lundström JN, Jones-Gotman M. Romantic love modulates women's identification of men's body odors. Hormones and Behavior 2009;55(2):280-284
  10. Dill-McFarland KA, et al. Close social relationships correlate with human gut microbiota composition. Scientific Reports 2019;9:703
  11. Valles-Colomer M, et al. The person-to-person transmission landscape of the gut and oral microbiomes. Nature 2023;614:125-135
  12. Nobel C. Smelling sweetheart's shirt may lower stress. HBS Working Knowledge / Harvard Gazette, 2018 (news)
  13. University of British Columbia. Catching a whiff of partner's scent could lower stress. ScienceDaily, 2018 (press release)
  14. Reynolds E. Trouble sleeping? The scent of your lover might help. BPS Research Digest, 2020 (news)
  15. University of Freiburg. The scent of a loved one makes the heart beat faster. 2026 (press release)
  16. Neuroscience News. Stressed Out? Try Sniffing Your Partner's Shirt. 2018 (news)

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