It turns out yes. The chemical composition of the air we exhale changes depending on the emotions we are currently experiencing.
Chemist Jonathan Williams (Jonathan Williams) together with colleagues decided to test whether «stress is really felt physically»1.
To do this, a mass spectrometer was installed in the cinema hall in the German city of Mainz, which analyzed the air every 30 seconds.
The experiment was performed several times during screenings of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
The researchers broke these films into 30-second segments and divided the scenes into several categories:
«tense»
«comedy»
«romantic».
In total, 9500 spectators visited the cinema during the experiment.
Scientists have discovered amazing patterns. For example, in all four sessions of The Hunger Games, during tense scenes when the main character was in danger, the content of the same substances increased in the air, including carbon dioxide, isoprene and acetone. Comedy scenes in other films also had their «chemical portrait».
Pheromones serve more than just attracting sexual partners. Perhaps with their help we warn each other about the danger or its absence.
Scientists suggest that such substances can serve as a kind of chemical signals that we give to each other. This may explain why the composition of exhaled air changed most obviously during tense and comedic scenes.
Perhaps these signals arose in the course of evolution and allow us to warn each other about danger or, on the contrary, about its absence. Many species of animals and plants exchange such signals using pheromones.
In the past, scientists looking for pheromones in humans have mainly studied axillary secretions in search of substances that regulate our sexual desire. But Jonathan Williams believes that if “human pheromones” exist, then they need to be looked for in the air we exhale.
And they most likely serve more than just attracting sexual partners.
1 Williams J. et al. «Cinema audiences reproducibly vary the chemical composition of air during films, by broadcasting scene specific emissions on breath», Scientific Reports, 2016, № 6.