Scientists: people exchange chemical signals when the handshakes

said Noam Sobel (Noam Sobel) from the Institute of science Weizmann in Rehovot (Israel).

Sobel and his colleagues came to this conclusion during a curious experiment, which was attended by about three hundred volunteers who came to the “interview” to scientists. When they came, each volunteer, scientists or greet him or her by the arm, or simply greeted them, and then left for a few minutes “for”.

At this time, the behavior of outstanding volunteers watched a whole set of hidden cameras and a special computer algorithm, monitored the movement of the hands wards Sobel. Simultaneously, the respiration experiment, participants watched a special instrument inserted into their nose before the “interview”.

This simple technique has revealed a lot of interesting and very non-obvious details about the nature of handshakes and how to behave with human hands. First, the group Sobel found that people almost constantly sniffs his own hands - as shown by the record hidden camera, hands volunteers are near to your mouth about 22% of the time.

Secondly, every handshake was accompanied by the fact that people unconsciously transferred his hand to my face and began strenuously to breathe the air that indicates that a handshake can play an important role in the transfer and reading of chemical signals.
To test this hypothesis, the researchers conducted another experiment - they put on sterile gloves, shook hands with several volunteers, and analyzed the chemical composition of substances, “stuck” to the latex.

It turned out that every handshake accompanied by a selection of many molecules of palmitic acid and squalene - pheromones, which are widely used dogs, rats and other animals to communicate. This fact, according to Sobel and his colleagues, shows that handshakes and kisses hand have not only an important psychological role, but invisible to us help us to communicate “chemically”.