Psychology of Fragrance Use: Perception of Individual Odor and Perfume Blends Reveals a Mechanism for Idiosyncratic Effects on Fragrance Choice

Abstract

Cross-culturally, fragrances are used to modulate body odor, but the psychology of fragrance choice has been largely overlooked. The prevalent view is that fragrances mask an individual's body odor and improve its pleasantness. In two experiments, we found positive effects of perfume on body odor perception. Importantly, however, this was modulated by significant interactions with individual odor donors. Fragrances thus appear to interact with body odor, creating an individually-specific odor mixture. In a third experiment, the odor mixture of an individual's body odor and their preferred perfume was perceived as more pleasant than a blend of the same body odor with a randomly-allocated perfume, even when there was no difference in pleasantness between the perfumes. This indicates that fragrance use extends beyond simple masking effects and that people choose perfumes that interact well with their own odor. Our results provide an explanation for the highly individual nature of perfume choice.

Major histocompatibility complex peptide ligands as olfactory cues in human body odour assessment

“…Interestingly, customers usually buy perfumes for their own use [42] and have always done so [43]. If perfumes are indeed chosen to reveal and/or enhance one's own body odour [20,21], it is not surprising that one dislikes on others what one likes for oneself [19]. This switch of choice preference with respect to perfume usage might be explained by ‘phenotype-matching’ [44], a process that is also implicated in kin-recognition.…”

Affective semantic space of scents. Towards a universal scale to measure self-reported odor-related feelings

“…First, some odor-related affective feelings, such as disgust for stimuli representing a source of disease or fear of stimuli announcing a danger, (e.g., a fire or a gas leak), serve the first function: avoidance of environmental hazards. The second function of olfaction is ingestion including the "detection fragrances emitted by these individuals: body odors are indeed known to help guiding bias against inbreeding (Weisfeld et al 2003, but see also Ferdenzi et al 2010) and to promote genetic diversity (e.g., Wedekind et al 1995), cosmetic odors being potentially consistent with the latter signal (Milinski & Wedekind 2001;Lenochová et al 2012). Extraneous odors may have their importance in the EOS category, since those contributing the most to form this category are related to cosmetics (namely flowery and fruity odors).…”

Mutual Olfactory Recognition Between Mother and Child

“…In addition, it is possible that the benefits of recognition are simply more important when at this time, since babies must find the breast for nourishment, compared to post-weaning, and perhaps because they rely more on olfaction than vision at this time of their development. Another reason why toddlers may not continue to be able to recognize their mothers is that mothers are more likely to have resumed use of perfumes compared to when they were breastfeeding, and perfumes not only carry their own fragrance but also produce unique odour mixtures when blended with body odour (Lenochová et al, 2012). Since we asked mothers to refrain from perfume use during odour collection, this would introduce a discrepancy between the odour to which toddlers have become accustomed and the stimuli presented.…”