title: Nosewitness identification: effects of negative emotion.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal; Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life Sciences (IBILI), Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Alho
authors.affiliation: 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.
authors.forename: Sandra C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Soares
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal; Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life Sciences (IBILI), Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
authors.forename: Jacqueline
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ferreira
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal.
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rocha
authors.affiliation: 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.
authors.forename: Carlos F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Silva
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division for Psychology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Mats J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Olsson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D004285:Dogs; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009812:Odorants; D055696:Olfactory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D012903:Smell / Q000502:physiology*