有体味是好事?!体味可让别人同情你

爱思英语编者按：人们总是对有体味的人敬而远之，并且看他们的眼神总是带着质疑。但最新研究发现，这类人往往更令人同情，也更容易得到别人的帮助。是不是大吃一惊？那些因为自身气味一直没有自信的人是不是没有那么难受了？

Lead author Jeroen Camps and colleagues, from the university KU Leuven in Belgium, said: 'Scents are omnipresent in our daily world and they are of great importance as represented by the use of perfumes or fragrances in the work environment.'
来自比利时鲁汶大学的首席作者杰伦和他的同事们说：“气味在我们日常生活中无所不在，而且工作环境里香水或香味的使用非常重要。”

'Even though it has been argued that bad scents invoke negative judgments, we argued and demonstrated that a bad body odour elicits feelings of pity in others.'This can include underarm sweat, smelly feet, bad breath or other foul-smelling odours. “
尽管有人认为坏气味会引发消极判断，但我们认为且证明了它会引起别人的怜悯之心。”这包括腋下出汗、脚臭、口臭或其他难闻的气味。

The research, published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, involved two experiments.
这项发表在《应用社会心理学杂志》上的研究涉及了两个实验。

In the first experiment, 36 participants were randomly placed into two groups.Half were asked to sniff a bad smelling T-shirt that had been dowsed in human sweat, beer and sprayed with foul smells. The other half smelt a more neutral-smelling T-shirt.All the T-shirts were of the same shape and colour and all participants were told to imagine the item belonged to someone they worked with.Researchers then measured how participants felt about the other person, using ratings from one - totally disagree, to five - totally agree.Participants in the odour condition felt significantly more pity than those in the neutral condition.
第一个实验中，36个参与者被随机分成两组。一半被要求闻气味不好的t恤，它浸过汗液、啤酒，还喷了臭味。另一半闻的是无气味的T恤。所有T恤的样式和颜色相同，全部参与者被要求想象T恤属于他们的某个同事。研究人员然后测试参与者对那个人的感受，使用从1（完全不同意）到5（完全同意）的评价方法。在“气味”条件下的参与者的比在“中性”条件下的参与者更有怜悯心。

A second experiment involved 62 participants. They were first asked to complete a maze alone before being seated next to someone wearing either a neutral or bad smelling T-shirt and asked to complete another maze.Finally, participants moved to a third room and were asked to divide 11 credits giving a chance to win film tickets between themselves and the other person.People who had sat next to an unpleasant smelling person donated more credits to him or her on average than people who sat next to someone without bad body odour.The authors said this 'showed that there are situations in which a person's unpleasant body odour increases others' helping behaviours toward this person'.
第二个实验有62名参与者。在旁边坐着穿没气味或有气味T恤的人完成谜题之前，他们先被要求独自完成谜题。最后，参与者到第三个房间被要求划分11分来评价自己和对方赢电影票的机会。比起坐在没有糟糕体味旁边的人，坐在不愉快气味边的人平均给更多的分数。作者说“这表明有些情况下，一个人的体味会增加别人对他的帮助”。

However, the earlier findings also indicate that if such information is not available 'people seem to give the bad smelling person the benefit of the doubt'.
然而，早期的研究结果也表明，如果这些信息不可用，“人们似乎会给坏气味的人质疑的眼神”。