The Nose Knows

Your nose knows what you like, so trust your sense of scent.

Pamela Dalton, PhD, a sensory scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, has an embarrassing confession: “I like the smell of diesel exhaust from buses or boats. I can’t tell you why. All I know is that when I smell that, I feel this jolt of happiness, and other people are just retching in the street!”

Dalton explains that the odors we like—or loathe—are very individual preferences. “In the past, if you have come to associate a particular scent with positive experiences, then that scent has the capacity, through association, to help you reexperience the mood that you were in when you first experienced it, whether positive or negative,” she says. She speculates that her affection for diesel fumes is connected to a happy afternoon spent on a boat or perhaps an exciting bus ride, although her memories are too fuzzy to be sure.

So if Clinique’s Happy fragrance doesn’t happen to make you as happy as it seems to make others, don’t worry about it. “For example, the accepted idea that lavender is relaxing is not actually very well documented,” says Dalton. “My understanding from the industry is that a lot of consumers will say that lavender relaxes them, but then when they are actually given the scent of pure lavender to smell, they don’t like it at all. Probably what they actually like is some commercial blend where there is a note of lavender paired with vanilla and other notes and they’ve come to associate that fragrance blend with something good.”

In addition to preference, people have different experiences. One woman may be able to identify five specific notes in a fragrance while another woman may only smell a general scent, and it may not be one of the five notes that her friend experiences.

So how can aromatherapy, fragrance companies, and candle makers have a chance at getting it right?

There are some popular fragrances that please many. Most people like vanilla because it is similar to a scent found in breast milk. Dalton says, “Within a culture, we tend to have similarities of what is associated with good and with bad, so that makes it easier for fragrance companies. In the United States, light, citrusy scents tend to be associated with memories that make us feel good. In other cultures, it’s different. When I lived briefly in South Africa, one of the most popular scents was a strong musk that I found really awful. It was indicative of some vegetation that grew wild in that area, and the locals would even chew musk-scented gum. When I smelled it, it would put me in the worst, depressive mood, but they just loved it.”