Shankar Vedantam

Yeah, so this was run in the UK, and they wanted to see how identity might shape our smell.

And so they used a very clever trick to manipulate people's social identity.

And then they had them smell this stinky shirt, which, you know, they had a research assistant wear this shirt for like a week, you know, sweating in it, exercising in it, not taking it off.

And then they put it in this like sealed bin and they had participants come in and smell this shirt.

And what they did was they manipulated the shirt so it either had a logo from the rival university, which was the University of Brighton, or the other half of the students got to see this with a Sussex, University of Sussex logo.

And so what they found is that when people were primed to think that this was an out-group member shirt, they thought it was much more disgusting.

much more putrid and odorous than when they thought the exact same smelling shirt was from a member of their own in-group.

And so it suggests that what we find disgusting is determined also by our identity and who we define as an in-group and out-group.

Yeah, I mean, what we're trying to argue and what the growing body of research suggests is that these identities are a lens that shape all kinds of our senses.

They shape how we're smelling and interpreting smells, what we're seeing, maybe what we're hearing.

And so they help provide a way of interpreting information as it comes in through all our senses.

So this might be one of the most famous and controversial games of all time.

In the dying minutes of the match, the jubilant English supporters' nerves were strained to breaking point.

The World Cup was within England's reach.

It was tied and it went to, you know, extra minutes.

And there was a shot by this English player and it went off the crossbar and it came down and landed very close to the goal line and then bounced out.

Goal claimed England.

No goal protested the Germans.

And all the English players celebrated.

They thought this was the, you know, World Cup winning goal.