Demographic and Geographical Determinants of Human Olfactory Perception of 909 Individuals Inhabiting 16 Regions
Citation
Drnovsek, E., Abraham, N. M., Abraham, J. N., Alizadeh, R., Aloulou, I., Chen, L., … Bratman, G., … & Oleszkiewicz, A. (2025). Demographic and geographical determinants of human olfactory perception of 909 individuals inhabiting 16 regions. iScience. doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113455
People around the world tend to agree on which smells are pleasant. But smelling something is more than just liking or disliking it. In this study, 909 people from 16 regions of the world were asked to describe 12 different things about how they experience smells, including how good it smells, how strong the smell is, or if it smells like something you can eat.
This work is connected to Bratman’s body of work on olfaction (i.e., sense of smell).
Abstract
The hedonic perception of odors is similar worldwide. However, our perception of smells is much more than just determining whether an odor is pleasant or not. Here, we expanded this assessment by recruiting 909 people from 16 regions of the world and measuring 12 perceptual dimensions (e.g., pleasantness, intensity, edibility), which were aggregated into an olfactory perceptual fingerprint. We used two fingerprints: descriptor-specific and odor-specific. Age, gender, and region explained 1.1%, 0.3%, and 9.6% of variance in the descriptor-specific fingerprints, respectively. Similarly, age, gender, and region explained 0.5%, 0.3%, and 8.2% of variance in the odor-specific fingerprints. Interestingly, odor intensity was more regionally dependent than pleasantness. Thus, olfactory perception across the globe may be better differentiated by odor intensity than pleasantness. Although there is some influence of individual and cultural backgrounds, human perception of odors appears to be quite similar worldwide, even when assessed using 12 perceptual dimensions.
Highlights
- Olfactory perception of 909 people from 16 regions was evaluated
- Human perception of odors appears to be quite similar worldwide
- Olfactory perception worldwide is better differentiated by intensity than hedonics
- Age and gender had a limited impact on individual perception of odors