Perfumes date back to more than 4000 years ago as discovered by a team of Italian archaeologists who dug up the earth and found the evidence of an enormous perfume factory that existed during the Bronze Age.

For thousands of years,  perfume continues to be an integral part of our lives.

Sometimes research bashes it by labeling it as potentially cancerous, sometimes scientists love it for the supposedly breakthrough properties of new brands to ‘kill’ bacteria. Regardless, everybody uses perfume, particularly during the most important times of one’s life.

You spray a little extra for a job interview

You never forget to spray it when you’re going to see bae

or you’re trying to get the attention of a potential bae

Some of you just collect all those beautifully bottled perfumes because you like to smell amazing

It’s obvious that it makes you and people around you feel pleasant, but does it actually make you more good-looking in the eyes of others? 

Let’s see what science says about perfume, shall we?

According to psychologists, how good-looking you are is not dependent only on what’s there to see visually, other senses also play an important role. For example, people’s voices have been shown to influence their perceived attractiveness.

So it’s not just what you see that decides how good someone looks but also what you hear, and certainly what you smell.

In an experiment, males and females were shown pictures of other men and women in three conditions; in the the presence of a perfume, without the presence of a perfume and in the presence of a pleasant smell that is not linked to people (for example, you like the smell of cookies but you don’t usually think that it’s coming from a person).

Results showed that participants ratings of how attractive, appealing and soft the men and women looked were significantly better in the presence of a perfume compared to the other conditions.

The study also showed that a presence of pleasant smell also resulted in a better mood.

So yeah, if you weren’t born with it, according to psychologists, you can still make it by investing in a good perfume.

Isn’t that good news?

Another interesting study showed that even if smelling good doesn’t effect how people see you, smelling bad definitely does. In this experiment, females reported other females as significantly less attractive when their pictures were shown in the presence of a bad body smell.

Conclusion being: Smell nice, it might add up to your overall appearance but not wearing any perfume might not be that harmful.

BUT SMELLING BAD can significantly make you look unattractive and make  people run in the opposite direction.

Something we knew along has now been backed up by research. Ab bhi na baaz aye tu kab?

So perfumes or no perfumes, I’m going to stick to my deodorant. What about you?

Cover image via: glamsham.com