Can thinking about your own culture change how you perceive the same chocolate odor? After a task asking them to consider characteristics of being Swiss, Swiss participants rated chocolate odor intensity higher than people who had not done the task. The key is the difference in change relative to their initial ratings.
This 2016 study used two experiments to examine not just cultural differences in preference, but whether making group membership salient at a particular moment affects judgments of odors.
Chocolate and popcorn as a cultural comparison
The researchers used a chocolate odor strongly associated with Switzerland and a sweet popcorn odor for comparison. Participants first rated each odor’s intensity, pleasantness, and familiarity on scales from 0 to 10, then completed a task involving thoughts about themselves or Switzerland. Afterward, each odor was presented 20 times, and changes from the initial ratings were analyzed.
The Swiss-identity task asked participants to list typical characteristics, interests, and foods, and to consider both positive and negative aspects of Swiss people. Including both was intended to avoid simply increasing positive feelings toward Switzerland. Participants were told the odor names after the initial ratings.
In the first experiment, chocolate intensity declined less
Experiment 1 analyzed 50 University of Geneva students: 25 Swiss and 25 non-Swiss people living and studying or working in Switzerland. Both groups completed the same task about Switzerland.
Compared with before the task, chocolate odor intensity fell by an average of 0.48 points in the Swiss group and 1.65 points in the non-Swiss group. Thus, Swiss participants’ ratings did not rise in this experiment; rather, the decline with repeated smelling was smaller. The difference in change between the groups was significant.
There was no group difference in popcorn intensity. However, the interaction testing whether the size of the group difference differed between chocolate and popcorn had p = .095, which did not meet the conventional 5% threshold. At this stage, interpreting the effect as specific to chocolate therefore requires caution.
The researchers also used a reaction task linking names of Swiss cities with words related to the self. Swiss participants showed a stronger association between the two, but the correlation between this reaction-time measure and the change in chocolate intensity was only a trend, at p = .056. This is consistent with an explanation involving self-association, but does not establish the mechanism.
The second experiment varied conditions among Swiss participants
Experiment 1 could not adequately separate differences in experience associated with nationality. Experiment 2 therefore included Swiss groups who thought about themselves as Swiss, thought about themselves as individuals, or completed no such task. A non-Swiss group who thought about Switzerland was also included, with 78 students analyzed overall.
The mean change in chocolate intensity was +0.76 points for Swiss participants primed with Swiss identity, −0.81 for Swiss participants with no task, and −1.00 for non-Swiss participants primed with Switzerland. The first group differed significantly from each of the latter two, and the interaction between odor type and task condition was also significant.
By contrast, Swiss participants who thought about themselves as individuals showed a mean change of −0.05 points. Their comparison with the Swiss-identity group had p = .061 and was not significant. Although parts of the original abstract and discussion describe the difference from the individual-identity condition strongly, it would be inappropriate to summarize the results as showing clear differences from every control condition.
Maintaining intensity rather than increasing liking
Neither experiment showed clear differences between conditions in changes in chocolate pleasantness or familiarity. In Experiment 2, popcorn showed no condition differences in intensity, pleasantness, or familiarity either. Experiment 1 reported an unexpected group difference only in popcorn familiarity, but there was no consistent finding that participants liked chocolate more.
The authors suggest that attention or interest directed toward a culturally relevant odor may have reduced the tendency to perceive it less strongly with repeated smelling. The smaller decline in Experiment 1 and the increase above baseline in the Swiss-identity group in Experiment 2 informed this explanation.
The measure was participants’ own judgment of odor intensity. The experiments did not measure thresholds for detecting trace odors or the functioning of receptors in the nose. Identifying the psychological processes responsible remains a task for future research.
Small student experiments on momentary identity salience
The participants were university students, most of them women, and it is unclear whether the findings extend directly to other culturally relevant odors or to diverse populations. The chocolate fragrances in the two experiments were similar but not identical. In Experiment 1, the reported total recruitment, nationality breakdown, and exclusions are also inconsistent, so this account uses the explicitly reported analyzed sample of 50.
Even so, comparing different topics of thought within the same cultural group is meaningful. The study examines culture and smell not only as a matter of fixed national characteristics, but also in relation to what people are thinking about at a given moment.
Summary
Swiss participants primed with Switzerland showed chocolate intensity ratings that remained higher relative to baseline, or increased, compared with non-Swiss participants or Swiss participants who completed no task. The difference from the individual-identity condition was not clear, and the findings did not show increased pleasantness.
The study suggests that a familiar cultural association may contribute to judgments of odors in the moment. When considering why an odor remains noticeable through repeated exposure, research can look beyond molecules and exposure count to what that odor means to the person smelling it.
The research received support from a Swiss National Science Foundation NCCR, a research grant from Firmenich, Canada’s SSHRC, and the US NSF. One coauthor was affiliated with Firmenich at the time, and the acknowledgments credit its research division for advice and technical assistance. No separate conflict-of-interest statement was found in the article.
Reference
Coppin G, Pool E, Delplanque S, et al. Swiss identity smells like chocolate: Social identity shapes olfactory judgments. Scientific Reports. 2016;6:34979. doi:10.1038/srep34979
