It may be possible to smell fear on another person:

“The chemical transfer of anxiety may cause a feeling of discomfort in the perceiver. It’s like a sixth sense,” says psychologist Bettina Pause of the University of Düsseldorf in Germany, one of the authors of the paper.

Here is the paper at PLoS ONE.

I’ve mentioned before how posture can affect your confidence, but could your body chemestry betray your anxiety anyway? Only if you let it. If you’ve worked on your self-affirmation enough, and are harnessing the power of the feedback loop of confidence from good posture, then it shouldn’t.

Also, it’s an unconscious perception, this smell of fear. It can be overruled and flanked. Of course, by doing so, you might remove the “anxiety sweat” from the equation altogether. Deodorant might also work.

Confidence is key to life, whether you mean to dominate a board meeting or are trying to beat Wilt Chamberlain. You are awesome, but not as awesome as me.

Related posts:

1. Science once again demonstrating the obvious
2. Let’s call it Fear
3. okay, i’m feeling a little punchy today.