While not deriving fully from the pages of social psychological literature, this experiment is just too good to pass up on reporting. In a recent study published by researchers at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, participants were asked to place absorbent pads underneath their armpits an hour before taking their final oral exam for the academic year and again before exercising. Another group of participants, tasked with sniffing the sweat collected on these pads, could not distinguish any difference between the sweat generated before taking the exam or exercising. However, when their brains were scanned while sniffing the sweat formed during these two diverse activities different parts of their brains were found to be activated, with the sweat collected before the exam causing areas of the brain responsible for social and emotional processes, as well as empathy, to become active. Given these findings, the authors of this study concluded that anxiety cause by the approaching exam in the first set of participants led to the release of a chemical that caused the second set of participants to feel fear and anxiety after it was sniffed and that this experience is conducted at a subconscious level of awareness, which provides evidence for one biological mechanism that may operate to motivate us to more quickly move away from harmful situations, like oncoming traffic or even a hazardous exam.
