Washington [US]August 12 (ANI): The results of a master’s study by Matheus Enrique Ferreira, currently a PhD candidate at the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo (IP-USP) in Brazil, suggest that smells affect our ability to see and interpret emotions. other people, even if we are not aware of the smell in question.
An article with detailed measurements of this effect was published in the journal PLOS ONE. “If I’m exposed to a pleasant smell, my perception of pleasant emotions is enhanced,” said Ferreira’s dissertation supervisor Mirella Gualtieri, Professor of Experimental Psychology at IP-USP, PhD in Neurology and Behavior. “The same is true for unpleasant odors, which increase our feelings of fear and disgust.”
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The research team assumed that olfactory stimuli are almost always associated with the perception of pleasantness or unpleasantness. “We don’t necessarily classify a visual scene as something we like or don’t like to see, but it often happens that the only thing a person can describe a smell is whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant,” said Gualtieri, the conductor. applied research in sensory psychology.
Using this premise, the group designed an experiment to find out how being in an environment that smells good or bad can affect how a person evaluates the emotions of others. Gualtieri emphasized that the experiment was not new. “The study of how we evaluate emotional facial expressions is actually very old. A notable aspect of our study, which has been presented in several studies, is that we did not focus on expressing very strong emotions,” she said. “Most researchers in this field work with emotions that are not particularly common in everyday life. Joy, sadness or anger are presented almost as stereotypes or caricatures. Emotions are usually conveyed in a different way.”
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The group asked for responses to a carefully sorted spectrum of emotions, starting with strong facial expressions rated as 100 percent intensity, and progressing in 10 percent increments from extreme joy or sadness, for example, to neutral. Each participant was asked to say whether the face expressed happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, or fear.
“We have come to the lowest intensity of expression necessary for a person to begin to correctly evaluate the emotion that it represents. We knew 100 percent wasn’t needed, but we wanted to know what the minimum would be. percent and 30 percent of the total content of the corresponding emotions,” explained Gualtieri.
After determining the intensity threshold required for participants to perceive these emotions, they then measured the time it took to reach a conclusion (reaction time). Finally, they observed how this could be changed by the presence of pleasant and unpleasant odors.
“We have shown how this effect occurs due to all sensory modes. All five senses must interact in order for humans to adapt to their environment, communicate, and survive. The article describes an example of this,” Gualtieri said. “The presence of smell, whether I realize it or not, will affect my visual processing and how I interpret visual stimuli as emotions.”
Individual judgments
Another novel aspect of the experiment was that each participant was allowed to decide whether smells were good or bad, instead of using predetermined categories. “Many studies of this kind use a category-based methodology to make sure participants categorize strawberry odor as pleasant and foot odor as unpleasant. There are such ready-made labels. it’s about smells and the categories don’t always fit,” Gualtieri said.
He added: “Our analysis was based on individual participants’ judgments of whether they found the smell pleasant or unpleasant. always good or bad. This choice significantly influenced our results. We decided to conduct the entire procedure based on the participants’ individual judgments of pleasantness or unpleasantness.”
The study sample consisted of 20 women and 15 men. Participants did not know that it was about the smell. They were told only that its purpose was to measure the speed with which they detected emotions conveyed by facial expressions. “We didn’t say anything about smells. A very small amount of a certain substance [butyric acid, smelling of rancid butter; isoamyl acetate, with a strong banana-like odour; or lemongrass scent] was placed in the microphone foam of the headset they used when they sat in front of the screen. The participants themselves spent the entire experimental session to identify emotions, and we measured success rates and response times,” Gualtieri said.
After this part was completed, the researchers explained that the purpose of the study was to find out if smells affect the assessment of emotions conveyed by facial expressions. Participants then rated each smell for pleasantness using a dial with a scale.
The article was also co-authored by Patricia Renovato Tobo, Scientific Director of Natura Innovation and Product Technology, a subsidiary of Natura Cosmetics, and Carla Regina Barrichello, also associated with Natura.
“The extent to which the hedonic valence of odors affects the emotional processing of visual stimuli has been highlighted in previous studies, but we knew several other factors could be involved. Our study showed a significant interaction between olfactory and visual stimuli, such that odors influence facial recognition and facial expressions influence emotional response to odors,” Tobo said. (API)