Résumé
Dataset supporting the main findings of the published paper entitled "Humans can detect axillary odor cues of an acute respiratory infection in others" published in Evolution, Medicin and Public Health (2023). Body odor samples were collected from 20 donors, once while healthy and once while sick with an acute respiratory infection. Using a double-blind, two-alternative forced-choice method, 80 raters were instructed to identify the sick body odor from paired sick and healthy samples (i.e., 20 pairs). Sickness detection was significantly above chance, although the magnitude of the effect was low (56.7%). Raters’ sex and disgust sensitivity were not associated with accuracy of sickness detection. However, we find some indication that greater change in donor body temperature, but not sickness symptoms, between sick and healthy conditions improved sickness detection accuracy.