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Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

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Re: Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

#21

Post by serf »

dopylitty wrote: post #9

I've been wondering what counts as touching your face for purposes of virus transmission. In the paper they highlight people whose fingers are under or in their noses but I wonder if something like grazing your cheek or forehead would count. Is there some mechanism the virus would use to migrate from the forehead/cheek into the eyes/nose or is the "don't touch your face" advice really shorthand for "don't pick your n…

>Is there some mechanism the virus would use to migrate from the forehead/cheek into the eyes/nose

i'm not a doctor/virologist/biologist/whatever, but one could imagine someones' perspiring face may aerosolize whatever was on its' surface due to the evaporative cooling effect.

I don't know whether or not that's practically feasible.

Re: Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

#22

Post by lolc »

I know how the wooden beams in my office smell. My mind can summon the smell of the handrails in the train station, disturbingly. The smell of my clothes, and crotch, before and after workout, it's right there. It takes me a while to accept clothes I got from other people as my own. Using strangers' detergent alienates me from my own clothes.

I don't like to touch things I know other people touch. (It's a weak effect, and doesn't bother me.) Is this related to smell? Do I not like getting other people's smell on my hands? Or is it just hygiene training? Hard to tell. If you were to count, I'd be smelling my hands a lot less when riding a bicycle not my own. Judging by that study.

It's interesting how the authors speculate about the link between self-smelling and consciousness. I am who I smell.

Re: Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

#24

Post by telesilla »

elliekelly wrote: post #14

I wonder whether makeup influences the frequency or location of face touches. I wear glasses/contacts and I’ve noticed I rub my eyes fairly often during my (recently makeup-free) work day but I definitely don’t when I’m wearing mascara or false lashes.

I am the same but maybe because we've learnt over time that touching our makeup smudges it? In which case, perhaps it's a good idea to wear a lot these coming weeks!

Re: Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

#25

Post by DominikPeters »

throwanem wrote: post #18
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #17

I am a native English speaker who graduated with a 3.8 GPA in History from a world Top 30 university. I still had to use a dictionary to understand what "subserves" means in this context. Our language is so hilariously broken with all of the "aliasing" that is used by people who want to make themselves sound smarter. What we should do instead is try to make sure other people can understand what we are trying to say.

I'm another native speaker who graduated high school more by dint of luck and pity than for any other reason, and then went to work instead of college. Between the context and the similarity with the adjective "subservient", "subserves" proved trivial to parse, and I haven't yet been able to come up with another expression of the same concept that is also as concise. In any case, it seems unlikely that educational at…

“subserves” -> “is for” could fit

Re: Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

#26

Post by throwanem »

DominikPeters wrote: post #25
throwanem wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm another native speaker who graduated high school more by dint of luck and pity than for any other reason, and then went to work instead of college. Between the context and the similarity with the adjective "subservient", "subserves" proved trivial to parse, and I haven't yet been able to come up with another expression of the same concept that is also as concise. In any case, it seems unlikely that educational at…

“subserves” -> “is for” could fit

I'd have gone with "supports", maybe, but the connotation is different; "subserves" says self-smelling is a major purpose of self-face-touching, "supports" suggests the association may be coincidental. Since the paper's claim appears to be the former, it makes sense to use the stronger word in the title, too.

Re: Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

#27

Post by quaquaqua1 »

throwanem wrote: post #18
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #17

I am a native English speaker who graduated with a 3.8 GPA in History from a world Top 30 university. I still had to use a dictionary to understand what "subserves" means in this context. Our language is so hilariously broken with all of the "aliasing" that is used by people who want to make themselves sound smarter. What we should do instead is try to make sure other people can understand what we are trying to say.

I'm another native speaker who graduated high school more by dint of luck and pity than for any other reason, and then went to work instead of college. Between the context and the similarity with the adjective "subservient", "subserves" proved trivial to parse, and I haven't yet been able to come up with another expression of the same concept that is also as concise. In any case, it seems unlikely that educational at…

"A hypothesis that if one touches their face, they are more likely to smell themselves as well"

is an infinitely clearer title, in my opinion.

If your goal is for only 5 people to understand you and think you are cool, then it's no surprise why we have academic titles like

"Embodied intersectionality and the intersectional management of hotel labour: the everyday experiences of social differentiation in customer‐oriented work"

Re: Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

#29

Post by dang »

contingencies wrote: post #28

Weird verb choice, subserves . I would have used effects or facilitates .

We've put a different, less subservient phrase from the article in the title above.

The submitted title was "A hypothesis that self-face-touching subserves self-smelling", which I assume was an admirable attempt to make the title less baity by using representative language from the text.

Re: Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf]

#30

Post by kylek »

nateburke wrote: post #11

Related: growing up, one of the things that my sister and I would joke about was the extent to which we both would both unconsciously smell our wrists and lower arm areas while doing math. We would catch each other all the time doing it and it was hilarious. Here is an example of what I am talking about: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/03/24/business/24artifi... As a completely uninformed guess, I think the link…

This must be why beard stroking is effective.
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