In a five-year study aimed at creating a “smell demography” of New York City, [Leslie Vosshall] said they subjected hundreds of volunteers found through Craigslist to intensive smell testing and found that the most pleasant scent, across groups, is vanilla.
The worst: Isovaleric acid, most commonly associated with eau de sweaty sock.
— From Volunteers Amble Through Olfactory Jungle Of NYC at CBS News.
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OMG! vanilla wins over sweaty sock? I’ll alert the media….
Now, now….
LOL!
That was such a colorfully-written and interesting article. Thanks for posting.
I find the following type of thing fascinating, as it calls into question how anosmic many of us are to one degree or another. Like color vision and degrees of colorblindness, it underscores how totally subjective our sensory experience is, sometimes for purely physiological reasons:
“Among the more interesting findings so far was that men secrete a particular smell that about 15 percent of New Yorkers are less likely to respond to, she said. The best smellers were young females who don’t smoke.”
I’m fascinated by this question of anosmia and hyperosmia. One or the other would totally alter the balance of a scent. I wonder to what extent the companies and perfumers understand this and factor it in to their compositions.
Yes…wish they’d elaborated more though. I mean, don’t some women also secrete a particular smell that some *men* don’t respond to? That sounds entirely normal to me.