Nosewitness identification: effects of negative emotion

Laura Alho; Sandra C Soares; Jacqueline Ferreira; Marta Rocha; Carlos F Silva; Mats J Olsson

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0116706

Nosewitness identification: effects of negative emotion

PLoS One. 2015 Jan 22;10(1):e0116706. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0116706. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Laura Alho¹, Sandra C Soares², Jacqueline Ferreira¹, Marta Rocha³, Carlos F Silva², Mats J Olsson⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Education, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal; Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life Sciences (IBILI), Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
² Department of Education, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal; Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life Sciences (IBILI), Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS), Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.
³ Department of Education, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal.
⁴ Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division for Psychology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

Abstract

Every individual has a unique body odor (BO), similar to a fingerprint. In forensic research, identification of culprit BOs has been performed by trained dogs, but not by humans. We introduce the concept of nosewitness identification and present the first experimental results on BO memory in witness situations involving violent crimes. Two experiments indicated that BO associated with male characters in authentic videos could later be identified in BO lineup tests well above chance. Moreover, culprit BO in emotional crime videos could be identified considerably better than the BO of a male person in neutral videos. This indicates that nosewitness identification benefits from emotional encoding. Altogether, the study testifies to the virtue of body odor as a cue to identify individuals observed under negative emotion.

Publication types

Clinical Trial
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Animals
Dogs
Emotions / physiology*
Female
Humans
Male
Memory / physiology*
Middle Aged
Odorants*
Olfactory Perception / physiology*
Smell / physiology*

Grants and funding

This study was supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council (421–2012–1125) and Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (P12–1017 to MJO), and by a doctoral grant from the Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/78911/2011 to LA). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.