Author Nicola Twilley talks about the development of her scratch 'n sniff map of New York City, and about related things of interest to perfumistas: smell preferences by gender, race and geographical location, the dangers of selective anosmia, the lack of a shared language to describe smells, Sissel Tolaas' smell maps, etc etc. Almost 17 minutes; recorded earlier this month at the Gel conference ("An event about good experience – in art, business, technology, society, and life."). Hat tip to Rachel!
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Very interesting and thought-provoking. Thank you so much for posting this. I found it odd that white people would be less positive than Asians about the smells of roses and orange peel, as this white person loves those two smells. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who disliked the smell of oranges. Now I’m wanting to order one of the kits from the Perfumer’s Apprentice to do some of my own olfactory testing.
Yes, I wondered at that, too. Actually, my first thought was that while I LOVE the scent of a full-blossomed rose, I don’t like rose perfumes, as a general rule. It made me wonder if the isolated samples, while scientifically necessary, might also skew the data away from the complexities of how we experience scent. After all, it isn’t a single isolate that we are smelling when we smell a rose or an orange but a complex array of scents. Would more white people respond positively if the scent sample included this variety of scents?
I also don’t know what the data looks like. It may be that white people liked rose, but didn’t rate it as highly as some other smells….would have to see the data set to know where they’re getting these conclusions.
Wow! How super-fascinating is that!?
I love the idea of exploring scent experience by different genetic and cultural backgrounds–a whole new kind of anthropology and culture studies. I also am sparked to wonder how gender identity plays a role–in the broader spectrum of gender studies, beyond traditional identifications into the GLBT community. For both culture and gender, the question to me is, “how much of this is taught to us and how much of it is basic biology?” Clearly cultural filters play a big role or labels like “gym sock” and “cheddar” wouldn’t make a difference.
From the perfumista perspective, I am wondering about the hidden messages we are sending by our personal scent choices. We have all had the experience of drawing someone in or repulsing them with a scent, but I suspect there’s more communication going on than that. Does it encourage people of similar backgrounds to connect, since they will experience the scent in similar ways?
So fun, thanks for sharing! (I am home sick today, so this will give me something else to consider besides fearing how the “guest teacher” is letting the kids tear my room apart. . . )
So sorry you’re sick, and hope you find other fun ways to use up the free time! And gosh, hope you had a good substitute.
Very interesting — though I feel like she vastly overstates the degrees of difference between what we *experience* – most of her examples have to do with differences of preference, not experience. We assume that everyone sees the same colors and hears the sames notes, but not everyone likes the same colors (or paintings) or the same music. For example I generally dislike slow songs in major keys, but it’s not because I hear them as being off-key or something.
Also, the eugenol example doesn’t, er, pass the sniff test — eugenol smells *both* sweet and spicy, and carnations smell like cloves!
She did say, though that every one of the hundreds of people in the study proved to be anosmic to at least one of the 66 aromachemicals tested. These anosmias must surely cause differences in smell experiences, just as colorblindness causes great differences in visual experiences. I haven’t had the pleasure of smelling carnations in a garden (they don’t grow well where I live and the nurseries don’t even sell the plants), but florists’ carnations at least smell sweetly floral to me, with only a hint of spice. I wouldn’t even think to describe them as smelling like cloves. On the other hand, most “carnation” perfumes smell like a whopping dose of clove, with very little floralness. If it is eugenol that gives those perfumes their characteristic scent, apparently I smell it as very spicy and not at all sweet.
True, but the example she gave was musk, and it’s already well-known that most people are anosmic to at least one kind of musk. Anosmia to synthetic musks wouldn’t have affected our ancestors because they didn’t exist then. 🙂
I think carnations, like roses, have different cultivars with different scents. Some roses smell very spicy with lots of eugenol, for example, while others are more fresh/lemony.
Traditional perfumery carnations contain eugenol, but lots of other molecules too so they’re more complex than straight eugenol. Cloves also contain a lot of eugenol.
I would like to see the data on which aromachemicals people were anosmic to, and whether it included some naturally occuring substances as well as the totally synthetic ones. From what she said, the researchers were quite surprised at the extent of the selective anosmias, which suggests it included much more than the admittedly well-known anosmias that most people have to one or more synthetic musks.
Yes, it would be interesting to see all the data — although it sounds like they were testing with single molecules, not complex substances. In nature you would only really encounter smells that include multiple molecules, so you could identify things (be it a strawberry or a rose or a pile of garbage) even if you couldn’t smell one of the individual molecules.
True, but it’s a short talk — these sorts of conference talks usually are — so I didn’t expect much detail. I should look around and see if she has a website for this project.
I would love to see detailed info on the results of this study: How many people were anosmic to each scent, what words were used to describe each of them, detailed ethnic, age, and gender preferences, charts, graphs, etc. The scientist in me is fascinated by things like that.