No abstract

The degree of attention individuals pay to olfactory cues (called odor awareness) influences the role of odors in everyday life. Particularly, odors produced by the human body (i.e., social odors) are able to carry a wide variety of information and to elicit a broad spectrum of emotional reactions, making them essential in interpersonal relationships. Hence, despite the assessment of awareness toward social odors is crucial, a proper tool is still lacking. Here, we designed and initially validated the Social Odor Scale (SOS), a 12-item scale designed to measure the individual differences in awareness towards different social odors. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA; KMO test: MSA = 0.78; Bartlett’s test: χ2(78) = 631.34, p < 0.001; Chi-squared test: χ2(42) = 71.84, p = 0.003) suggests that the three factors structure was the model that best fit with the Italian version of the scale. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supports a second-order model with one higher-order factor representing social odor awareness in general and three lower-order factors representing familiar, romantic partner, and stranger social odors. The final version of the scale presented a good fit (RMSEA = 0.012, SRMR = 0.069, CFI = 0.998, TLI = 0.997). In Study 2, CFA was performed in the German version of the scale confirming the validity of scale structure. Study 3 and 4 revealed that SOS total score and its subscales were positively correlated with other validated olfactory scales, but not with olfactory abilities. Moreover, SOS was found to be related to the gender of the participants: women reported to be more aware to social odors and, specifically, to familiar social odors than men. Overall, the results indicated that SOS is a valid and reliable instrument to assess awareness toward social odors in everyday life.

The degree of attention individuals pay to olfactory cues (called odor awareness) influence the role of odors in everyday life. Particularly, odors produced by the human body (i.e., social odors) are able to carry a wide variety of information and to elicit a broad spectrum of emotional reactions, making them essential in interpersonal relationships. Hence, despite the assessment of awareness toward social odors is crucial, a proper tool is still lacking. Here, we designed and validated the Social Odor Scale (SOS), a measure to assess the individual differences in awareness towards different social odors. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) supports the initially developed four factor structure of the Italian version of the scale. In Study 2, EFA was performed in the German version of the scale confirming the validity of scale structure. Finally, a confirmatory factor analysis (Study 4) corroborates the construct validity of the SOS and its subscales. Hence, the final version of SOS is composed of 16 items, four for each subscale: own, familiar, romantic partner, and stranger social odors. Study 3 and 4 revealed that SOS total score and its subscales were positively correlated with other validated olfactory scales, but not with olfactory abilities. Moreover, SOS was found to reflect the inter-individual variability that characterize social odor processing: SOS was related to age, gender and reproductive state of the participants. Overall, the results indicated that SOS is a valid and reliable instrument to assess awareness toward social odors in everyday life.