Where You Live Can Determine What Smells Good to You
From brain chemistry to cultural cues, here’s why fragrance is never experienced the same way twice.
One day in Capri, the smell of the Tyrrhenian Sea filled the air and Champagne bubbles tickled my nose as I got engaged. I remember what I was wearing, olfactorily speaking: Dior Lucky, a joyful lily of the valley. This bottle of happiness still transports me back to that day—and there are five good reasons why.
1. There’s a biological pathway between scent and emotion.
With each breath we take, we inhale more than air. Above the nasal cavity is the olfactory bulb and, when stimulated by scent molecules, its neurons send messages directly to the brain’s limbic system, which controls behavioral and emotional responses. So, as we perceive smell, we get an emotional bang at the same time, says Rachel Herz, PhD, a neuroscientist and adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University.
If you lose your sense of smell, a condition known as anosmia, you may experience a significant void in how you process emotions, and memories can even be incomplete. “[Odor] affects countless subconscious interactions we have throughout our lives,” says Zara Patel, MD, an associate professor of otolaryngology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “It is a primary determining factor in how we choose sexual partners and life mates, and it allows us to pick up on and respond to many social cues.”
2. It’s all a bit of a mind game.
“Smells exist only in our heads. Molecules exist in the air, but we can only register some of them as ‘smells,'” writes psychologist Avery Gilbert, PhD, in What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life. How you think something smells — good, bad, funky, clean — depends on your experiences. When two people sniff a perfect May rose, they can have totally different reactions based, in part, on their memories associated with that scent.
In perfumes, “the fact that a molecule of phenylethyl alcohol smells like rose is a function of our brain, not a property of the molecule,” writes Dr. Gilbert. “Odors are perceptions.”
3. Where you live matters.
“The associations we have with fragrances are learned through personal experience with the scent and our cultural [experience], like how lavender is relaxing [to many],” says Dr. Herz. If you were French Canadian, however, you would likely find maple or wintergreen more familiar than lavender, as illustrated in a study published in the journal Chemical Senses.
Vanilla is generally comforting, like a big slice of birthday cake (its scent is also similar to breast milk), while musk is perceived as clean. “Musk has been used in laundry detergents, so people associate musky notes with freshness and nostalgia,” says Mackenzie Reilly, a perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances.
4. You might stop noticing a loved one’s perfume.
When you’re continuously exposed to a scent, “your brain says ‘been there, done that’ and doesn’t pay attention anymore,” explains Calice Becker, a perfumer and director of the Givaudan Perfumery School in Paris. The technical term for this is olfactory adaptation. “After about 20 minutes, we no longer smell [a scent],” says Dr. Herz.
5. Seeing isn’t the only way of believing.
As David Moltz, the perfumer behind D.S. & Durga, says, “You can say the same amount with fragrance as any other art form. You can create a whole narrative with aromas.”
