Someone wearing fragrance seems a little more confident. Does that impression arise from sensing something about their inner self through odor, or has the added fragrance changed the impression?
A study published in 2021 by Ilja Croijmans and colleagues examined these possibilities separately. Its starting question was whether differences in self-esteem, or how people value themselves, appear in body odor and carry through to interpersonal judgments by those smelling it. The researchers also tested whether fragranced body spray changes that transmission.
Separating body-odor donors from those evaluating impressions
Based on questionnaire responses from 216 men, the researchers selected sweat donors from low- and high-self-esteem groups. The final sample comprised 16 in each group, 32 in total. The grouping was based on scores on a scale asking about self-evaluation, not on a medical diagnosis.
Each man collected underarm sweat on cotton pads on two occasions: once wearing fragranced body spray and once without it. Food and fragranced personal products were restricted beforehand. Samples pooled material from four donors in the same group and condition, yielding four combinations of high or low self-esteem and fragrance presence or absence.
The samples were evaluated by 62 heterosexual women aged 18–35. All experienced the four conditions, with order effects controlled. Neither participants nor the experimenter conducting the evaluations knew which sample was being presented.
While smelling a sample placed near the nose, the women watched approximately 30-second silent clips from a dating show and rated the men’s apparent confidence, attractiveness, and extraversion on 0–100 scales. Crucially, the men in the videos were not the sweat donors. This was not a test of identifying the donors’ own personalities, but an experiment asking whether odor affects impressions of someone viewed at the same time.
Body odors were distinguishable, but self-esteem did not carry through
In a discrimination task separate from video evaluation, participants selected which of two samples matched one they had smelled first. When comparing unfragranced sweat from the high- and low-self-esteem groups, accuracy was 61.2%, above the 50% chance level. With fragrance, accuracy was 52.8%, not demonstrably better than chance. These percentages do not represent correctly identifying whether someone had high or low self-esteem.
In ratings of the odors themselves, sweat from the high-self-esteem group was judged more pleasant than sweat from the low-self-esteem group. Without fragrance, the high group’s sweat was perceived as less intense; adding fragrance made the intensity difference between groups unclear. Overall, samples collected with body spray were rated more pleasant, intense, and familiar than samples collected without it.
However, the study did not show that smelling sweat from one self-esteem group rather than the other changed confidence or attractiveness ratings of the men in the videos. In this experiment, perceivable differences in body odor and their translation into impressions of a person’s inner qualities were separate matters.
Adding fragrance slightly raised person ratings
Fragrance presence did make a difference. With fragranced sweat, mean ratings of the video men’s confidence increased from 49.03 to 51.65, and attractiveness ratings from 31.58 to 34.45. Both used 0–100 scales, so the average differences were about three points.
Statistical differences were reported for both, but the confidence result was close to the significance threshold and received only weak support from another statistical approach. This was not an effect large enough to suggest that fragrance makes everyone substantially more attractive. There was no clear difference in extraversion ratings, nor were changes shown in the evaluating women’s own mood or arousal.
The findings also did not show a special benefit of fragrance limited to the low-self-esteem group. There was no evidence that fragrance-related changes in person ratings differed between high and low groups. The original hypothesis that fragrance could mask low self-esteem was therefore not directly demonstrated.
Fragrance can contribute to nonverbal impression formation
The authors emphasized that although their hypothesis of self-esteem being conveyed through natural body odor was unsupported, worn fragrance did appear to influence impressions of people. They argue that adding fragrance, like adjusting tone of voice or facial expression, can alter the cues that reach others.
However, this experiment did not observe the behavior of the person wearing the fragrance. What it observed was a change in impressions caused by odor reaching the viewer. Measurements of the sweat donors’ momentary self-esteem likewise found no change due to body spray.
To explain why body-odor differences did not carry through to person ratings, the authors discuss the mismatch between video subjects and sweat donors, and the possibility that conscious ratings miss subtle responses. They also suggest that body-odor cues related to self-esteem might emerge more readily under social stress. These are explanations for future research, not mechanisms demonstrated in this experiment.
The scope of the findings
The study was limited to women evaluating men’s body odors and used a single body spray. Effects might differ when people choose a fragrance that suits them or converse with someone in person.
Moreover, because samples pooled sweat from multiple people, distinctive odors from some donors may have appeared as differences between entire groups. An association between questionnaire-based self-esteem groups and body odor also does not establish that self-esteem itself changed the odor.
The research received funding and materials from Unilever, and two coauthors were declared employees of the company. The paper states that the company did not participate in data collection, analysis, or the decision to publish.
Summary
In this study, body odors from men grouped by high and low self-esteem were distinguishable, but those differences did not translate into confidence or attractiveness ratings of men in videos. Adding fragrance to body odor, by contrast, slightly raised those person ratings on average.
Wearing fragrance may do more than cover body odor: it may change the cues others use when forming impressions of a person. The authors’ findings are not evidence that fragrance accurately conveys inner qualities, but that people may be able to influence odor-based impression formation.
References
Croijmans, I., Beetsma, D., Aarts, H., Gortemaker, I., & Smeets, M. (2021). The role of fragrance and self-esteem in perception of body odors and impressions of others. PLOS ONE, 16(11), e0258773. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258773 · Full original article.
Original article: © 2021 Croijmans et al. CC BY 4.0.
