“Are Humans Constantly but Subconsciously Smelling Themselves?”, 2020-04-20 (; backlinks; similar):
All primates, including humans, engage in self-face-touching at very high frequency. The functional purpose or antecedents of this behavior remain unclear.
In this hybrid review, we put forth the hypothesis that self-face-touching subserves self-smelling.
We first review data implying that humans touch their faces at very high frequency. We then detail evidence from the one study that implicated an olfactory origin for this behavior: This evidence consists of statistically-significantly increased nasal inhalation concurrent with self-face-touching, and predictable increases or decreases in self-face-touching as a function of subliminal odourant tainting.
Although we speculate that self-smelling through self-face-touching is largely an unconscious act, we note that in addition, humans also consciously smell themselves at high frequency.
To verify this added statement, we administered an online self-report questionnaire. Upon being asked, ~94% of ~400 respondents acknowledged engaging in smelling themselves.
Paradoxically, we observe that although this very prevalent behavior of self-smelling is of concern to individuals, especially to parents of children overtly exhibiting self-smelling, the behavior has nearly no traction in the medical or psychological literature. We suggest psychological and cultural explanations for this paradox, and end in suggesting that human self-smelling become a formal topic of investigation in the study of human social olfaction.