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Chemical Senses Advance Access originally published online on April 9, 2008
Chemical Senses 2008 33(5):469-479; doi:10.1093/chemse/bjn014
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Emotional Processing of Odors: Evidence for a Nonlinear Relation between Pleasantness and Familiarity Evaluations

Sylvain Delplanque1, Didier Grandjean1,3, Christelle Chrea1, Laurence Aymard2, Isabelle Cayeux2, Bénédicte Le Calvé2, Maria Inés Velazco2, Klaus R. Scherer1,3 and David Sander1,3

1 Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, rue des Battoirs 7, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland 2 Firmenich, SA, Route des Jeunes 1, 1227 Geneva, Switzerland 3 Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, 40 Bld du Pont d'Arve, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland

Correspondence to be sent to: Sylvain Delplanque, Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, rue des Battoirs 7, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland. e-mail: sylvain.delplanque{at}pse.unige.ch


  Abstract

Pleasantness, familiarity, and intensity are 3 interdependent dimensions commonly used to describe the perceived qualities of an odor. In particular, many empirical studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between familiarity and pleasantness. However, on the basis of both theoretical and methodological perspectives, we questioned the validity of such a relation for malodors. We report 2 studies based on subjective judgments of a large sample of odorants (Experiment 1) associated with autonomic recordings (Experiment 2). Multivariate exploratory analysis performed on the data splits the whole odorant set into 2 subsets composed, respectively, of unpleasant and pleasant odorants. Subsequent correlation analyses have shown that the relation between pleasantness and familiarity is specific for the pleasant odors in the 2 experiments. Moreover, autonomic activity was more important in response to malodors than to pleasant odors and was significantly correlated with unpleasantness ratings in the subset of unpleasant odors. These 2 studies argue in favor of a functional dissociation in the relations between both subjective and autonomic responses to odors as a function of pleasantness and indicate that researchers in the olfactory domain should consider the relations between pleasantness and familiarity as more complex than linear.

Key words: electrodermal activity, emotion, familiarity, hedonicity, human olfaction, pleasantness, subjective scales

Accepted 13 March 2008


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