Smells like teen spirit

Subliminal smells and a Person's Likeability

Isabel Acosta, 2007-49035

This clip shows Phoebe Buffay singing her oh-so-famous song, Smelly Cat from the sitcom Friends. Here are the lyrics so that you can sing along!

Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat,

What are they feeding you?

Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat

It's not your fault

They won't take you to the vet

You're obviously not their favorite pet

Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat,

It's not your fault

You may not be a bed of roses

You're not friend to those with noses

I'll miss you before we're done

Or the world will smell as one

According to Li, Moallem, Paller and Gottfried's study (2007), we do not like smelly people as much as we do not like smelly cats.

Stinky people are not received well.

The researchers were aware of how powerful odors were in evoking emotions, memory, and even attraction --whether above or below threshold odors were used. For their study, they wanted to further explore if odors had to be consciously perceptible in order to affect people's behavior and perceptions, specifically concentrating on social preferences. Since scents induce emotional responses and since the olfactory system is structurally connected to the limbic system (were affective processing occurs), then subliminal odors may influence social affective evaluations. They also assumed that subliminal odors' effect on us could also be manifested physiologically, since odors can influence autonomic responses.

Some smells make us remember certain memories and make our heart raise!

Thirty-one participants participants were asked to sniff three bottles containing a pleasant (citral), neutral (anisole), and unpleasant (valeric acid aka sweat) odor. The odors presented ranged from consciously smellable levels to barely perceptible ones. They were told that in 75% of the trials, an odor was present, and that they had to identify by key press if they detected its presence. Afterwards, a picture of a neutral face was displayed and the participants rated them for their likeability, from extremely unlikeable to extremely likeable. Heart rate and respiration were measured in 20 participants throughout the experiment.

Before this experiment, the participants' thresholds were individually measured and thus applied during their trials (the barely noticeable scents presented were two notches below their threshold level). Also, the researchers made sure to test beforehand the pleasantness, unpleasantness and neutrality of the odors used as stimuli, and also the neutrality of the faces presented.

I would rate this face as extremely pleasant, because he smells good.

Results showed that people who were not aware of the presence of the smell rated the faces as less likeable after smelling the unpleasant odor than after they smelled the pleasant odor. But the face likeability perceptions of people who were more aware of the presence of an odor were less biased. “When sensory input is insufficient to provoke a conscious olfactory experience, subliminal processing prevails and biases perception. But as the awareness of a scent increases, greater executive control in the brain is engaged to counteract unconscious olfaction.” It was also found that heart rate was higher following the presence of unpleasant odor than pleasant odor, regardless of the level of awareness. So, odors do influence us psychologically and physiologically, even at subconscious levels!

Certain smells evoke certain impressions, man!

It is amazing how even our social preferences and judgements --human social behavior-- are affected by sensory stimuli, such as odor --and subliminal ones to boot! Human beings derive so much information from subliminal stimuli and are influenced by them more than they are aware of. It's amazing how much information the environment offers us, yet we do not have to be aware of all of them for them to affect our perceptions and derived meanings. It is so interesting and so amazing that we are so highly attuned and sensitive to stimuli even below the conscious level --truly, our sense of smell and the influence of smell are underappreciated. The researchers noted that their study was further evidence to the acute sensitivity of human olfaction. This sensitivity is so remarkable. The fact that humans are affected physiologically even without awareness led the researchers to speculate that perhaps, human beings possess a specialized high-affinity sensory channel for odors carrying threatening messages. These odors can elicit certain behaviors that are necessary for survival. Unpleasant smells are usually signals for something rotten, bad, or unkempt, and this raises our heart rate, affects our judgement, and tells us to avoid the stimuli. We draw from previous experience and associations in order to reach these conclusions. Truly every inch of our bodies function and operate for a reason.

Certain smells can serve as warning signs or elicit cautionary behavior!

I found the study so interesting, because once again, subliminal stimuli has proven to influence our perceptions --even as far reaching as our perceptions of likeability! Can you believe that smells that escape our awareness have that much impact on our social behavior? It is so unbelievable! Smells! Something as frivolous as smells affects our perception of people?! Hamazing! Even unconsciously, our brains can process stimuli we are not totally aware of, and it can make associations without our control or volition. There are truly so many sources we derive information from and there are so many different kinds we are receptive to --human beings really are informavores. This study also teaches all of us to be more critical of my assumed pure judgements of people. They may be stained by implicit stimuli that may or may not even be rightfully telling of the person's character. It also encourages one to be more conscientious of one's own hygiene, and to think about what impression one is exuding through one's personal scent.

Our senses are really the means by which we experience life. Life as we know it, is filtered first through these different modalities. I learned a lot of technical information from this course on Perception (Psych 135) but my favorite one was my new and heightened appreciation for every little thing I sense (smell, taste, feel, hear, see, etc) in all my encounters with the world. Life is an experience of the senses, and I can never forget that. I can never take that information for granted.

This is my last journal entry, but hopefully, not the end to my interest in perception.

Smell you later!

Source:

Li, W., Moallem, I., Paller, K. A., & Gottfried, J. A. (2007). Subliminal Smells Can Guide Social Preferences. Psychological Science, 18(2), 1044-1049.