Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Emotional processing of odors: evidence for a nonlinear relation between pleasantness and familiarity evaluations

Published inChemical senses, vol. 33, no. 5, p. 469-479
Collection
  • Open Access - Licence nationale Oxford University Press
Publication date2008
Abstract

Pleasantness, familiarity, and intensity are 3 interdependent dimensions commonly used to describe the perceived qualities of an odor. In particular, many empirical studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between familiarity and pleasantness. However, on the basis of both theoretical and methodological perspectives, we questioned the validity of such a relation for malodors. We report 2 studies based on subjective judgments of a large sample of odorants (Experiment 1) associated with autonomic recordings (Experiment 2). Multivariate exploratory analysis performed on the data splits the whole odorant set into 2 subsets composed, respectively, of unpleasant and pleasant odorants. Subsequent correlation analyses have shown that the relation between pleasantness and familiarity is specific for the pleasant odors in the 2 experiments. Moreover, autonomic activity was more important in response to malodors than to pleasant odors and was significantly correlated with unpleasantness ratings in the subset of unpleasant odors. These 2 studies argue in favor of a functional dissociation in the relations between both subjective and autonomic responses to odors as a function of pleasantness and indicate that researchers in the olfactory domain should consider the relations between pleasantness and familiarity as more complex than linear.

Keywords
  • Adult
  • Autonomic Nervous System/physiology
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Female
  • Happiness
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Multivariate Analysis
  • Odors
  • Recognition (Psychology)/physiology
  • Reference Values
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Smell/physiology
  • Stimulation, Chemical
Citation (ISO format)
DELPLANQUE, Sylvain et al. Emotional processing of odors: evidence for a nonlinear relation between pleasantness and familiarity evaluations. In: Chemical senses, 2008, vol. 33, n° 5, p. 469–479. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjn014
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Article (Published version)
Identifiers
Journal ISSN0379-864X
730views
452downloads

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