Global Study of Social Odor Awareness

Sorokowska A 1 , Groyecka A 1 , Karwowski M 1 , Frackowiak T 1 , Lansford JE 2 , Ahmadi K 3 Show all authors , Alghraibeh AM 4 , Aryeetey R 5 , Bertoni A 6 , Bettache K 7 , Blumen S 8 , Blazejewska M 1 , Bortolini T 9 , Butovskaya M 10 , Cantarero K 11 , Castro FN 12 , Cetinkaya H 13 , Chang L 14 , Chen BB 15 , Cunha D 16 , David D 17 , David OA 18 , Dileym FA 4 , Domínguez Espinosa ADC 19 , Donato S 6 , Dronova D 10 , Dural S 20 , Fialová J 21 , Fisher M 22 , Gulbetekin E 23 , Hamamcioglu Akkaya A 24 , Hilpert P 25 , Hromatko I 26 , Iafrate R 6 , Iesyp M 27 , James B 28 , Jaranovic J 29 , Jiang F 30 , Kimamo CO 31 , Kjelvik G 32 , Koç F 24 , Laar A 5 , Lopes FA 12 , Macbeth G 33 , Marcano NM 34 , Martinez R 35 , Mesko N 36 , Molodovskaya N 1 , Moradi Qezeli K 37 , Motahari Z 38 , Mühlhauser A 39 , Natividade JC 40 , Ntayi J 41 , Oberzaucher E 39 , Ojedokun O 42 , Omar-Fauzee MSB 43 , Onyishi IE 44 , Paluszak A 1 , Pierce JD 45 , Pillay U 46 , Portugal A 15 , Razumiejczyk E 47 , Realo A 48 , Relvas AP 16 , Rivas M 49 , Rizwan M 50 , Salkicevic S 26 , Sarmány-Schuller I 51 , Schmehl S 39 , Senyk O 52 , Sinding C 53 , Sorbring E 54 , Stamkou E 55 , Stoyanova S 56 , Šukolová D 57 , Sutresna N 58 , Tadinac M 26 , Tapanya S 59 , Teras A 60 , Tinoco Ponciano EL 61 , Tripathi R 62 , Tripathi N 63 , Tripathi M 64 , Uhryn O 65 , Yamamoto ME 12 , Yoo G 66 , Sorokowski P 1

Affiliations 

  • 1 Institute of Psychology, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland
  • 2 Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
  • 3 Behavioral Sciences Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
  • 4 Department of Psychology, College of Education, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 5 School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana
  • 6 Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy
  • 7 Department of Psychology, Monash University, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia
  • 8 Department of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica Del Perú, Lima, Peru
  • 9 Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • 10 Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
  • 11 Faculty in Sopot, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot, Poland
  • 12 Laboratory of Evolution of Human Behavior, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal City, Brazil
  • 13 Department of Psychology, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey
  • 14 Department of Psychology, University of Macau, Macau, China
  • 15 Department of Psychology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
  • 16 Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
  • 17 International Institute for the Advanced Studies of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health, Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
  • 18 Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
  • 19 Departament of Psychology, Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico
  • 20 Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Izmir University of Economics, Izmir, Turkey
  • 21 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
  • 22 Department of Psychology, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada
  • 23 Department of Psychology, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey
  • 24 Faculty of Literature, Department of Anthropology, Cumhuriyet University, Sivas, Turkey
  • 25 School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK
  • 26 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
  • 27 Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Lviv, Ukraine
  • 28 Department of Clinical Services, Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Benin-City, Nigeria
  • 29 Belgrade University, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 30 Department of Organization and Human Resources Management, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China
  • 31 Department of Psychology, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
  • 32 Department of Medicine and Health Sciences (MH), Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
  • 33 Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, National University of Entre Rios, Concepción del Uruguay, Argentina
  • 34 Philadelphia University, Philadelphia, USA
  • 35 Department of Social Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
  • 36 Institute of Psychology, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
  • 37 Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran
  • 38 Institute of Psychology, University of Science and Culture, Tehran, Iran
  • 39 Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  • 40 Department of Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • 41 Faculty of Computing and Management Science, Makerere University Business School, Kampala, Uganda
  • 42 Department of Pure and Applied Psychology, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Nigeria
  • 43 School of Educational Studies and Modern Languages, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Malaysia
  • 44 Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria
  • 45 College of Science, Health, and the Liberal Arts, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
  • 46 Independent scholar, Bangalore, India
  • 47 Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, National University of Entre Rios, Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • 48 Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
  • 49 Universidad del Magdalena, Santa Marta, Colombia
  • 50 Institute of Clinical Psychology, University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan
  • 51 Center of Social and Psychological Sciences SAS, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Bratislava, Slovakia
  • 52 Department of Psychology, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Lviv, Ukraine
  • 53 INRA, Centre des Sciences du Gout et de l'Alimentation - CSGA, Dijon, France
  • 54 Centre for Child and Youth Studies, University West, Trollhättan, Sweden
  • 55 Departament of Social Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 56 Department of Psychology, South-West University "Neofit Rilski", Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
  • 57 Educational Research Centre, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia
  • 58 Jurusan Pendidikan Kepelatihan, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
  • 59 Department of Psychiatry, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
  • 60 Mõttemaru OÜ, Tartu, Estonia
  • 61 Institute of Psychology, University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • 62 Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Bangalore, India
  • 63 Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, India
  • 64 SRM Institute of Science and Technology, School of Management, Chennai, India
  • 65 Faculty of Psychology, Lviv State University of Internal Affairs, Lviv, Ukraine
  • 66 Department of Child and Family Studies, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea
Chem. Senses, 2018 08 24;43(7):503-513.
PMID: 29955865 DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjy038

Abstract

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10 794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education, and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density, and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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