The findings of a scent study conducted at Wayne State University were recently published in New Scientist magazine and included a possible link between the aversion to family smells and avoiding incest.

Tiffany Czilli, a recent graduate of Wayne State's honors program, conducted the study under the guidance of Wayne State psychology Professor Glenn Weisfeld.

Czilli recruited 25 families with at least two children aged between six and 15 years. Each family member was given odorless T-shirts, odorless soap and resealable plastic bags with their names on them. The volunteers were told to sleep in the T-shirts for three nights, wash only with the odorless soap and seal the t-shirts in the plastic bags.

Then the volunteers were asked to sniff two T-shirts, one worn by a family member and the other by an unrelated person. Among the findings were that the volunteers far preferred the smells of other people than their own family members. The study also found that opposite-sex siblings disliked each other's smells, mothers disliked their children's smells, and the children had a strong aversion to their dad's scent.

Czilli concluded that the reaction by family members to each other's scent might be part of a mechanism that prevents incest. She presented the findings of her study earlier this month at a conference of the International Society for Human Ethology in Montreal.

Czilli, of Windsor, is slated to pursue a master's degree in clinical pharmacology at Wayne State in the fall.

Wayne State University is premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 14 schools and colleges to more than 31,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.