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The sense of smell in relation to our affective states and wellbeing
Published in Philip N. Murphy, The Routledge International Handbook of Psychobiology, 2018
C. Licon, C. Manesse, C. Rouby, M. Bensafi
In the previous sections of this chapter we presented a series of studies showing that smells affect the emotional dimensions of wellbeing, including positive and negative mood, perceived stress and anxiety, approach and avoidance behavior, social interaction and cognitive processing. However, despite the effort made by researchers and improvements in technology, the influence of odors on mood and behavior cannot be shown to be a general rule. For example, whereas odors can act on preferences for other people (Todrank, Byrnes, Wrzesniewski, & Rozin, 1995) and can influence cognitive tasks (Warm et al., 1991), studies involving higher-level cognitive processes (namely linguistic or mathematical performance) failed to show any influence of odors (Knasko, 1993). Odor effects on behavior, mood and cognition are not systematically observed, and the literature includes some negative results, likely due to great intra- and inter-individual variation. A series of factors therefore need to be further considered in order to fully understand the influence of odors. For instance, the above-mentioned study by Li and colleagues (2007) showed that the effect of odors on face perception was found only in people who were not aware of the presence of the odor, suggesting that awareness of olfactory stimulation is an important variable that needs to be taken into account. Other interfering factors include methods and techniques (e.g., subjective scales, odor diffusion systems), which vary between studies, but also biological factors such age and gender. For example, regarding gender, Saxton and colleagues (2008), showed that women – but not men – exposed to a molecule contained in human sweat (androstadienone) evaluated men’s faces as more attractive. With respect to age, some authors found that appreciation of pleasant odors increased with age, for example for lavender and spearmint (Wang, Eslinger, Smith, & Yang, 2005) or cloves and rose (Markovic et al., 2007). In contrast, Joussain and colleagues (2013b), in a larger study including more odorants and using electroencephalography, reported that pleasant odors were rated less pleasant in older adults, once again highlighting the difficulty of generalizing findings. Notwithstanding such limitations, and despite some negative results, there is substantial evidence that odors affect mood, behavior and cognition.
Effects of the odorant Hedione on the human stress response
Published in Stress, 2021
Another approach to olfactory modulation of the human stress response is chemosensory communication – the transfer of information between individuals via chemosensory cues (Lübke & Pause, 2015). Meta-analytic evidence supports chemosensory communication of stress and threat among humans (de Groot & Smeets, 2017). However, evidence of altered endocrine response patterns is inconclusive, and was only investigated for androstadienone, a component of male sweat (e.g. Bensafi, 2004).