The men’s and women’s sections of a perfume counter can guide our choices. But if we cannot see the category or bottle and smell only a fragrance on someone’s skin, do our preferences still follow those divisions?
A study published by Anna Lindqvist in 2012 examined two commercial perfumes applied to the wrists of a woman and a man. Seventeen people took part. Although this was a small conference paper, it offers a concrete comparison for thinking about commercial categories and preferences based on smelling.
Choosing two perfumes without strongly polarized gender impressions
The perfumes were Dior Higher Energy, then categorized as masculine, and Dalí Laguna, categorized as feminine. The study did not evaluate every product or formulation currently sold under those names.
The two were selected from 12 perfumes compared in an earlier study. Both had received high pleasantness ratings and were near the middle of the feminine–masculine impression continuum. They were therefore not a pair chosen to represent sharply contrasting gender impressions.
The author focused on overlap in scent impressions despite separate commercial categories. Since the earlier research presented perfumes in bottles, this experiment asked whether similar tendencies would appear on skin. Combining skin odour and perfume might change the evaluations.
Blindfolded judgements for oneself and a partner
The wearers were one woman and one man, both aged 30. They washed their wrists with unscented soap and avoided other perfume, scented shampoo and similar products during the experiment. Each wore one of the two perfumes on each wrist.
The paper reports an application amount of 1 millilitre for each perfume. This was an experimental condition, not a recommended amount for everyday use.
The assessors were 17 university students aged 20–30: nine women and eight men. They had no training in fragrance evaluation, and the original paper describes all as heterosexual.
Blindfolded participants smelled one wrist at a time. They answered three questions: whether they would like to use the fragrance themselves, whether they would like a partner to use it, and whether they thought the wearer was a woman or a man. They could not make the judgement by looking at the wearer.
No clear difference by the assessor’s or wearer’s gender
For either perfume, responses about using it oneself or wanting a partner to use it showed no significant difference between female and male assessors. The author therefore pooled their responses to examine differences associated with the wearer.
That comparison also found no significant difference in willingness to use a perfume when it was smelled on the woman’s versus the man’s wrist. The same applied to wanting a partner to use it.
This does not mean that everyone liked the same perfume. Nor does it prove that preferences or skin effects are identical across genders. The result is that statistically clear differences were not detected with this sample and these conditions.
Preferences for oneself and a partner were related
There was, however, a relationship between wanting to use a fragrance oneself and wanting a partner to use it. Participants tended to want partners to wear perfumes that they themselves wanted to use.
Within this study, preferences for oneself and for a partner did not form opposite choices aligned with commercial gender categories. Actual couples were not studied, however, so the results cannot show whether a partner would also like the perfume or use it after receiving it as a gift.
Accuracy in identifying the wearer’s gender ranged from roughly 40% to 70%, depending on the condition. The author interpreted this as difficulty reliably identifying gender from scent. It cannot be expanded into a claim that perfume eliminates differences in body odour: there was no unperfumed comparison or analysis of body-odour components.
Looking beyond gender categories
The author argued that a binary distinction between perfumes for women and men cannot fully explain all fragrance preferences. She proposed that classification by odour quality, meaning the characteristics of the scent itself, could also be considered.
This proposal reflects the selection of two perfumes from an overlapping region of gender impressions despite their different commercial categories. Comparing only scents rated as extremely feminine or masculine can make that overlap harder to see.
The experiment did not test the usability of a new classification system. Nor did it relabel a perfume from men’s to women’s, so it does not answer whether the label itself changes preferences.
Summary
When two commercial perfumes with intermediate gender impressions were evaluated on skin, willingness to use them showed no clear difference by the assessor’s or wearer’s gender. Responses about fragrances for oneself and for a partner were related.
This was a limited study with 17 assessors, two perfumes and only one wearer of each gender. Even so, it offers material for considering overlap in preferences that retail gender categories do not fully capture. It points toward organizing perfumes not only by gender categories but also by how they actually smell and who likes them.
References
Lindqvist, A. (2012). How is Commercial Gender Categorization of Perfumes Related to Consumers Preference of Fragrances? Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 65, 370–374. ICIBSoS 2012 conference paper. DOI: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.136 / Full text. Original article license: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.
