Differences in Perception of Everyday Odors: a Japanese-German Cross-cultural Study

Abstract

There is a growing appreciation that experience with odors may strongly influence their perception. To further investigate this, the responses of 40 Japanese and 44 age-matched German women to everyday odorants were compared. Subjects were presented with 18 stimuli in squeeze bottles and asked to rate them according to intensity, familiarity, pleasantness and edibility, to describe associations elicited by them and, if possible, to name them. One-third of the odorants were presumed to be familiar to the Japanese only, one-third to the Germans and one-third to both populations. Significant differences were found between the two populations on all measures. Better performance by the Japanese in providing appropriate descriptors for 'Japanese' odorants and by the Germans for 'European' odorants supported the pre-selection of stimuli as culture-typical. Particularly clear differences between the two populations were found in pleasantness ratings. In general, a positive relationship was found between pleasantness and judgement of stimuli as edible, suggesting that culture-specific experiences-particularly of foods-may significantly influence odor perception. Somewhat unexpectedly, significant differences were also found between the two populations in intensity ratings for some odorants. These differences did not seem simply to be artefacts of the test situation and raise the possibility that experience may even influence such basic aspects of odor perception as stimulus intensity.

Predicting Odor Pleasantness from Odorant Structure: Pleasantness as a Reflection of the Physical World

“…That perceptual pleasantness is a reflection of optimal physicochemical discrimination may at first appear at odds with the notion that olfactory pleasantness is both variable across individuals and cultures (Wysocki et al, 1991;Ayabe-Kanamura et al, 1998), and also malleable within individuals over time (Cain and Johnson, 1978;Hudson, 1999;Stevenson and Repacholi, 2003). Thus, given our result, how does one explain existing variance in Figure 6.…”

“…Judgments of pleasantness and other olfactory properties can vary across cultures (Wysocki et al, 1991;Ayabe-Kanamura et al, 1998;Hudson, 1999). Given that molecules are universal but that olfactory perceptions may be culturally specific, in experiment 7, (starting at ϳ0.01).…”

Culture and odor categorization: agreement between cultures depends upon the odors

“…This result could be explained by higher similarities between French and American olfactory environments compared to the Vietnamese olfactory environment. This opposition between Western cultures and Asian cultures has been observed by many authors in chemical senses: in ratings of perceptual dimensions (Ayabe-Kanamura et al, 1998;Pangborn et al, 1988;Wysocki et al, 1991), acceptability of body odors (Schleidt et al, 1981), the use of hedonic scale for food products judgments (Yeh et al, 1998), taste perception, and preferences (Bertino & Chan, 1986;Yamaguchi, 1991).…”

Predicting Odor Pleasantness from Odorant Structure: Pleasantness as a Reflection of the Physical World

“…Judgments of pleasantness and other olfactory properties can vary across cultures (Wysocki et al, 1991;Ayabe-Kanamura et al, 1998;Hudson, 1999). Given that molecules are universal but that olfactory perceptions may be culturally specific, in Experiment 7, we tested our predictive model in 3 different cultures: among Americans in California, Muslim-Arab Israelis, and Jewish Israelis.…”