An Examination of Objective and Subjective Measures of Experience Associated to Odors, Music, and Paintings

Abstract

Odors have been shown to elicit highly emotional memories, as well as alter emotions and induce moods. A critical challenge for the uniqueness of olfactory emotional potency is a stimulus with perceived inherent emotional quality. Music and paintings are such stimuli. Notably, olfactory experiences are distinguished from auditory and visual experience by limited verbal representation. It was therefore speculated that weak linguistic representation might be responsible for the emotional potency of odors; and therefore if verbal fluency were controlled for, odor-evoked associations would lose their emotional distinctiveness. To test this hypothesis and assess the emotionality and quality of experiences and associations evoked by odors, music and paintings, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1 subjects assessed moderately familiar odors and music, and in Experiment 2 subjects assessed highly abstract (unfamiliar/unnamable) odors, music, and paintings. Rating scale and questionnaire (subjective) and numbers of labels, memories, and heart-rate changes (objective) measures were obtained. Results revealed that, in both experiments, heart rate was consistently higher in response to odors than to music and paintings. It was also found that verbal fluency did not affect the emotionality of experiences to odors. Additionally, subjective and objective measures of emotional arousal were not related for any stimulus type, and despite objectively measured evidence to the contrary, subjects believed that music was able to affect their emotions and moods more than were odors and paintings. The present results show that 1) odors are more emotionally arousing than other aesthetic sensory stimuli, 2) language does not mediate this effect, and 3) objective and subjective aspects of aesthetic perception are not necessarily correlated.