The Effect of Emotion and Personality on Olfactory Perception
It is well established that both the emotional tone of sensory stimuli and the personality characteristics of an individual can bias sensory perception. What has largely been unexplored is whether the current emotional state of an individual has a similar effect, and how it works together with other...
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Published in | Chemical senses Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 345 - 351 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Oxford
Oxford University Press
01.05.2005
Oxford Publishing Limited (England) |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | It is well established that both the emotional tone of sensory stimuli and the personality characteristics of an individual can bias sensory perception. What has largely been unexplored is whether the current emotional state of an individual has a similar effect, and how it works together with other factors. Here we carry out a comprehensive study to examine how olfactory perception is affected by the emotional tone of the stimuli, and the personality and current emotional state of the individual. Subjects reported experiencing happiness, sadness, negativity/hostility and neutrality when exposed to corresponding emotionally themed video clips, and in each case, smelled a suprathreshold pleasant, an unpleasant and a neutral odorant. The time taken for the subject to detect each odorant and the olfactory intensity were recorded. We found that women detected the pleasant odorant faster than the neutral one. In addition, personality modulated reaction time and olfactory intensity, such that neurotic and anxious individuals were selectively biased toward affective rather than neutral odorants. Finally, current emotional state augmented intensity in men but not in women, and differentially influenced the response time. These findings provided new insights into the effects of emotion and personality on olfactory perception. |
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Bibliography: | istex:8DAA890252669B57DDD9B7908556B69A1BF1D983 local:bji029 ark:/67375/HXZ-C99N8DCC-1 Correspondence to be sent to: Denise Chen, Psychology Department MS-25, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX 77005, USA. E-mail: xdchen@rice.edu ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0379-864X 1464-3553 |
DOI: | 10.1093/chemse/bji029 |