Photo: flickr/stevendepolo
Here's another entry to add to our list of contagious behaviors (which currently includes yawning and driving like an old person): sniffing. In this study, the researchers had participants sit in an "odor clean room" and watch the movie Perfume, which contains "28 movie sniff events (MSEs) where a character takes a sniff" in the first 60 minutes of the film. While the movie was playing, the researchers measured how often the subjects sniffed within 7 seconds of hearing and/or seeing a sniff in the movie compared to all other sniffing. They found that the subjects sniffed along with the characters in the movie, and especially when the sniff was heard without seeing what was being sniffed. The authors speculate that this mirror sniffing could be an evolutionary adaptation, because when you see someone else sniff, "there is 'something important in the air,' and we better find out ...
