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Chemical Senses Advance Access published online on May 16, 2007
Chemical Senses, doi:10.1093/chemse/bjm030
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Olfactory Cues Modulate Facial Attractiveness

M. Luisa Demattè1,2, Robert Österbauer3 and Charles Spence1

1 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, OX1 3UD, Oxford, UK 2 Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione, Università degli Studi di Trento, Corso Bettini 31, 38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy and 3 Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Correspondence to be sent to: M. Luisa Demattè, Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione, Università degli Studi di Trento, Corso Bettini 31, 38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy. e-mail: dematte{at}form.unitn.it


  Abstract

We report an experiment designed to investigate whether olfactory cues can influence people's judgments of facial attractiveness. Sixteen female participants judged the attractiveness of a series of male faces presented briefly on a computer monitor using a 9-point visual rating scale. While viewing each face, the participants were simultaneously presented with either clean air or else with 1 of 4 odorants (the odor was varied on a trial-by-trial basis) from a custom-built olfactometer. We included 2 pleasant odors (geranium and a male fragrance) and 2 unpleasant odors (rubber and body odor) as confirmed by pilot testing. The results showed that the participants rated the male faces as being significantly less attractive in the presence of an unpleasant odor than when the faces were presented together with a pleasant odor or with clean air (these conditions did not differ significantly). These results demonstrate the cross-modal influence that unpleasant odors can have on people's judgments of facial attractiveness. Interestingly, this pattern of results was unaffected by whether the odors were body relevant (the body odor and the male fragrance) or not (the rubber and geranium odors).

Key words: facial attractiveness, olfaction, pleasantness, vision

Accepted 30 March 2007


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