Feeling Ugly? Wear Perfume!

110826_marc-jacobs

Have you ever wanted to change the way people view you? What if I told you it was as simple as spraying perfume on yourself?

A recent study conducted by Monell Chemical Senses Center, has revealed that a women’s facial attractiveness ratings can be altered simply by her odor.  In the study, 18 young adults were asked to rate both the attractiveness and age of 8 different female faces. While the participants viewed a photo to rate, a scent was released that they would smell.  There were five scents that could be released, ranging from a pleasant rose smell to an unpleasant fish oil smell. The study found that odor pleasantness directly influenced facial attractiveness.

When it came to guessing age along with the odors released, the results were mixed. According to Science Daily, “visual age cues strongly influenced age perception during pleasant odor stimulation”.  So, older faces were deemed as older than their actual age and younger faces were perceived as younger than their age.  In the presence of unpleasant odors, the ages of those who were older and younger were deemed closer in age. Essentially, if you are a girl and wear pleasant perfume, you are to be perceived as more attractive, but also your age will be perceived more intensely depending on how old you are.

I found these findings extremely interesting. I really liked this study because it was experimental and reverse causation can easily be ruled out, so I trust the findings.  However, I would like to see this study conducted with more than 18 people. There could be many third variables such as geographic location, social class, and nose sensitivity that could potentially be playing a role. I am also very interested to see if there will be future studies conducted on males.  I think that males will be deemed more attractive if they are associated with more pleasant smells, but I am not sure on how their age will be affected. This is something I will definitely look into in the future!

Kristen Robertson

Resources:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140529181652.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2643738/Womens-faces-rated-attractive-presence-pleasant-odours.html

4 thoughts on “Feeling Ugly? Wear Perfume!

  1. Margaret Mercedes Mccarthy

    I would like to see this experiment done a little differently due to the fact that we don’t truly know that it is the smell that is affecting their appeal to the female in the photo. If there were more people, as you stated, and there were two different control groups (one with the smell one without) I think it would be a more convincing case. If the group that viewed the picture with a scent, rated the female on average a more attractive, then I think the study would have been more accurate.

  2. Kelsey Huber

    I love this post! I never really looked into it much but this post really develops the idea of smell and attraction well. However, I think that the experiment could be improved and executed better. There are many 3rd variables that could potentially alter information, as listed in the blog. I agree with the fact that the sample size should be increased. With such a small amount of people being tested it is hard to tell whether it would prove true to a greater population. The logistics of attraction and scent are developed further in this article http://www.youbeauty.com/relationships/attraction-scent

  3. Natalie Michelle Soltero Cabrera

    It is so interesting how perfume can affect whether men find you attractive or not. I think that there are many variables that could be affecting this, also I think that including to your list, it depends on the perspective of the man thats looking at the women, because like more people say beauty is different for everyone. I think a bigger study would be perfect here. I found a website that explains the secret of a good perfume. http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/beauty/news-features/TMG3346776/The-sweet-smell-of-seduction.html

  4. Hannah Elizabeth Boothman

    I think this post is extremely interesting. It’s obvious that people are more pleasent to be around when they smell nice, but I would never have thought that smell actually impacted how someone could view the beauty of another individual. This makes me wonder if this works in other situations. Would a room feel more clean and tidy if it smelled nice?? Let me know what you think!

    I found this topic cool so I decided to do some further research.
    http://www.medicaldaily.com/smelling-good-could-make-others-see-you-more-attractive-285724
    At the end it states that perhaps a lot more of our actions could be due to “chemosignals”

Leave a Reply