Have you ever wondered how the mind associates a smells
with good memories or bad smells with negative memories?
For me it’s, “The comfort I get when I walk into a room in
my house with old furniture and it reminds me of sitting in my Gran-Mothers
kitchen warming up by the range after being out on the yard or on my way home
from school.”
There have been many studies into the effects of scents,
smells, odours and aromatherapies that can’t affect the mood of you and your
friends. Its not just walking into a
bakery after the bread has left the oven, there’s that new car smell and the
new baby smell these are all cause good feelings and associations. In comparison the smell of rotting food, and
even death which lingers in the air, which is associated with disgust, anxiety,
and fear.
As your smelling the sweet scents of perfume or aftershave for men, the scent goes into the back of the nose and hits millions
of sensory neurons, this is called the olfactory epithelium. The Olfactory system has cells containing
proteins that bind the odorant molecules these are transmitted to the olfactory
bulb through receptors cells, which themselves are receptors designed to bind
molecules. Each scent sends of a unique sequence
to the receptors with each unique sequence it will cerate a perception of sweet
flowers or another sequence sharp fresh aftershave. As each of the unique
sequences reach the olfactory system they get transmitted to the brain by
electrical signals through the olfactory bulb.
Our sense of smell is in the primal part of
our brain, none of the other senses has a direct connection to areas of the
brain that process memory, associated learning and emotion. This is how sometimes smells can trigger
emotions before you are aware of what you are smelling the fragrance.
Taste is also affected, with taste being a
multi-sensory phenomenon, taste as in the food we eat is created through flavours,
smells and visual senses. When food is
chewed or sipped the vapours pass into the air passages that connect the mouth
and nose. The olfactory receptors are stimulated allowing for other flavours to
be realized.
Humans have about 10cm squared but dogs have
170cm squared of olfactory epithelium, a dog’s epithelium is 100 x denser with
receptors per centimetre square.
Advertising Companies using the psychology of smell to create memories and emotions
With this in mind advertising agency have used this knowledge for
their brands to help entice you to associate their products with good emotions.
Even Apple (the company) are scenting their Apple Mac Pro
boxes with an orchard scent. Everyone loves the unboxing of their apple products,
a lot of thought and experience has gone into the process to make it enjoyable,
exciting everything you wanted and more. You are also paying for that
experience and the studies that go into creating those experiences, it is an
art form which may be underappreciated, by other companies and brands.
Food producers even
design there packaging so you can smell the scents through there packaging when
cooking like the coffee Nespresso they have designed their pods to release the
coffee smell into the air while being made.
Bakeries also release the aroma of fresh bread onto the street. This is to entice
people in for that freshly baked bread, that probably left the oven at 6am that
morning when you weren’t around to smell that blissful sweet smell.
Around the WORLD
People’s Perceptions of smell changes around the world. These scents are from what we
have grown up around and have been exposed to, and what is local to us, as the
internet does not yet have smell everything we experience is local. Different traditions, religions, and
available foods all play a part. On a
very broad look, the Indian cultures like a lot of spices in their foods, the
Asian Cultures loves Garlic, the West loves milk and dairy, this can influence
the smell of the people in that country.
Even Floral smells have different meaning around the world
due to their association, what is expensive and modern in the UK can be old
fashioned in the USA used as toilet cleaner in Brazil.
Some perfumes show the ideal scents of countries and how their
perception is very different; -
Japan and south Korea would prefer a sweet fragrance, you would
find notes of Jasmine and rose in their perfumes Issey Miyake’s L’Eau D’issey
Eau de Toilette
United Kingdom – preferred perfume is Chanel no5 Eau de
Parfum – it would be a rich full fragrance, rose and jasmine with bright citrus
notes and bourbon vanilla.
USA - like simpler scents that have a fruity combination
Byredo’s Bibliotheque has a floral note of peony and violet with peaches and
plum.
France – like a charming and full fragrances Chanel CoCo
mademoiselle with its fruity, floral and citrus notes is a very complex elegant
perfume.
Other areas were smell is making differences
Health has a smell - in traditional Chinese medicine its
more herbal natural authentic smell were as in the UK it’s the smell of
antiseptic. Hospitals are a good example
of association memories with smell for some it will trigger memories of lose
sorrow and pain in others joy, relief and feeling safe.
We could look into health further in that dogs can smell out
illnesses and changes in our bodies as we release odours that they can detect
but we can’t in most recently they have been trained to sniff out covid-19 but
more notoriously able to sniff out cancer.
Thoughts
Can we use scent to increase productivity in an office or a
workspace, they have already done it to get us to buy more in bakeries, car
stores, takeaways etc. They have done it to get us to relax in spas and at home
with those wonderful candles and essence oils or your favourite spa, I am
relaxed just thinking about it.
As I research this more there are lots of blends of
aromatherapy oils for different emotional conditions, if your stressed use
lavender, lime and spearmint or if tired use juniper, wild orange, and
grapefruit. At the moment I am not tired but I think
that juniper blend could be nice and fresh for my kitchen area.
The sense of smell is underrated in comparison to the other
senses as without it, it would affect us greatly. Some food would be bland and favourless or
sweet and favourless Try the Jelly bean test eat a jelly bean and hold your
nose, they all taste the same but before this the red was my favourite.
Our world would become smaller as we would no longer smell
Mum’s cooking cookies at Christmas.
(Christmas is the holiday of smell.) We would no longer not smell rotten food
before it hit our lips. Yuck. We wouldn’t
have that memory of the past being triggered when it was far from memory or
contemplation.
As we get older we can lose our sense of smell gradually and
we don’t even realise it, this in turn can affect appetite and sometimes
contributing to poor nutrition. It is thought that early lose of smell can
detect illnesses. The scientists are
looking at Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to see if this is an early symptom.
I find this all
fascinating as it was an overlooked sense that highly educated people have been
engineering our perceptions without us realising it, to get an outcome that is
favourable to them.
Here are some of my references: -
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-scents-affect-peoples/
https://www.fifthsense.org.uk/psychology-and-smell/
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/fragrant-flashbacks
