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Chemical Senses Advance Access published online on October 20, 2008
Chemical Senses, doi:10.1093/chemse/bjn062
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Implicit Association between Odors and Illness

Patricia J. Bulsing, Monique A. M. Smeets and Marcel A. Van den Hout

Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, PO Box 80140, 3508 TC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Correspondence to be sent to: Patricia J. Bulsing, Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, PO Box 80140, 3508 TC, Utrecht, The Netherlands. e-mail: p.bulsing{at}uu.nl


  Abstract

Some individuals ascribe health symptoms to odor exposures, even when none would be expected based on toxicological dose-effect relationships. In these situations, symptoms are believed to have been mediated by beliefs regarding the potential health effects from odorants, which implies a controlled type of information processing. From an evolutionary perspective, such a form of processing may hardly be the only route. The aim of the present study was to explore the viability of a fast and implicit route, by investigating automatic odor-related associations in the context of health. An Implicit Association Test assessing association strengths between the concept odor and the concepts healthy and sick was conducted. Three experiments (N = 66, N = 64, and N = 64) showed a significantly stronger association between the concepts odor and sick than between odor and healthy. These results did not match explicit associations and provide evidence for a fast and automatic route of processing that may complement consciously controlled processes. A dual-processing theory of olfactory information is proposed leading to new hypotheses regarding the development and maintenance of odor-induced health symptoms.

Key words: health, implicit association test, implicit attitude, implicit measure, indirect measure, odor perception

Accepted 17 September 2008


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