The Nose Smells What The Eyes See

In our everyday lives, our senses are bombarded with stimuli. From sight to sound to touch, and even scent. When our olfactory systems sense a smell, what factors contribute to our perception of an odor being positive or negative? New research suggests that the emotional expression of others around you may play a role.

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers had participants examine pictures of human faces with happy, neutral, or disgusting expressions. After viewing, participants then rated one of twelve scents.

The findings revealed that the facial expressions the participants were exposed to influenced their odorous perception. Participants who were exposed to a happy face rated the scent higher than did a separate participant who was exposed to the same odor after viewing a face of disgust. This applied to aromas of caramel and lemons as well as the scents of sweat or garlic. The only scent in the study which appeared to be unaffected by the emotion displayed in the picture was the smell of feces.

These findings suggest that there are external factors which appear to influence our perception of a scent. The paper reported that the same participant rated the same smell differently depending on the image they viewed. The conclusion here is that the same smells can be perceived differently. Next time you are out and catch an aroma in your nose, consider your surroundings and ponder if your perception of the odor was influenced by the emotions of people around you. Odds are they did.

This was Article 74 from the Studio Quick Facts Series.


Works cited
Cain, W. S. To know with the nose: keys to odor identification. Science 203, 467–70 (1979)

Djordjevic, J., Zatorre, R. J., Petrides, M., Boyle, J. A. & Jones-Gotman, M. Functional neuroimaging of odor imagery. Neuroimage 24, 791–801 (2005

Gottfried, J. A. & Dolan, R. J. The nose smells what the eye sees: Crossmodal visual facilitation of human olfactory perception. Neuron 39, 375–386 (2003)

Herz, R. S. & Von Clef, J. The influence of verbal labeling on the perception of odors: Evidence for olfactory illusions? Perception 30, 381–391 (2001)

Mandairon, N. et al. Context-driven activation of odor representations in the absence of olfactory stimuli in the olfactory bulb and piriform cortex. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 8, 138 (2014)

RUB (2017, August 24). How the Emotions of Others Influence Our Olfactory Sense. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved August 24, 2017 from http://neurosciencenews.com/olfaction-emotion-7368/

Studio Quick Facts

The bi-weekly series focused on the science behind how humans interact with technology.

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Theodore (Ted) Stark

Written by

Empirically minded User Experience professional with a bias towards the science that informs human-computer interaction.

Studio Quick Facts

The bi-weekly series focused on the science behind how humans interact with technology.

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