Many smells are subjectively good or bad, but in most people objectively agree even if they come from completely different cultural backgrounds. This indicates that there is an evolutionary basis for our global preference for scents. A new study asked 280 people around the world to smell 10 different scents and rate them based on how pleasant or unpleasant they seemed.
The sample of people contained people who lived in cities, villages, deserts, forests, coastlines, mountains and consisted of people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds.
The perfume that stood out as the most liked was vanillin, the main ingredient of vanilla spirit. Second came ethyl butane due to its fruity scent (often used as a flavor enhancer in fruit flavored foods) and third came linalool with a floral scent.
The least desirable odor was isovaleric acid, a strong odor associated with cheese, soy milk and sweat.
Research has found that the influences of cultural traditions play only a very small role in people’s preference for smells. They were even able to determine the percentage, with the molecular profile of the chemical explaining 40% of the selection and 56% due to personal preference, while only 6% was attributed to cultural factors.
There is an important global consequence. Overall, the data show that olfactory perception is defined by global authorities.
Researchers believe that the physicochemical properties of smells served an evolutionary purpose in our history, increasing the chances of survival of our ancient ancestors.
Now that we know that there is a universal sense of smell that is defined by molecular structure and explains why we like or dislike a particular smell, the next step is to study why this happens, combining this knowledge with what happens in the brain when we smell a particular smell.
The research was published in Current Biology.
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