Global study of social odor awareness

• Main Authors: Agnieszka Sorokowska, Agata Groyecka, Maciej Karwowski, Tomasz Frackowiak, Jennifer E. Lansford, Khodabakhsh Ahmadi, Ahmad M. Alghraibeh, Richmond Aryeetey, Anna Bertoni, Karim Bettache, Sheyla Blumen, Marta Błazejewska, Tiago Bortolini, Marina Butovskaya, Katarzyna Cantarero, Felipe Nalon Castro, Hakan Cetinkaya, Lei Chang, Bin Bin Chen, Diana Cunha, Daniel David, Oana A. David, Fahd A. Dileym, Alejandra Del Carmen Domínguez Espinosa, Silvia Donato, Daria Dronova, Seda Dural, Jitka Fialová, Maryanne Fisher, Evrim Gulbetekin, Aslihan Hamamcioǧlu Akkaya, Peter Hilpert, Ivana Hromatko, Raffaella Iafrate, Mariana Iesyp, Bawo James, Jelena Jaranovic, Feng Jiang, Charles Obadiah Kimamo, Grete Kjelvik, Firat Koç, Amos Laar, Fívia De Araújo Lopes, Guillermo Macbeth, Nicole M. Marcano, Rocio Martinez, Norbert Mesko, Natalya Molodovskaya, Khadijeh Moradi Qezeli, Zahrasadat Motahari, Alexandra Mühlhauser, Jean Carlos Natividade, Joseph Ntayi, Elisabeth Oberzaucher, Oluyinka Ojedokun, Mohd Sofian Bin Omar-Fauzee, Ike E. Onyishi, Anna Paluszak, John D. Pierce, Urmila Pillay, Alda Portugal, Eugenia Razumiejczyk, Anu Realo, Ana Paula Relvas, Maria Rivas, Muhammad Rizwan, Svjetlana Salkičević, Ivan Sarmány-Schuller, Susanne Schmehl, Oksana Senyk, Charlotte Sinding, Emma Sorbring, Eftychia Stamkou, Stanislava Stoyanova, Denisa Šukolová, Nina Sutresna, Meri Tadinac, Sombat Tapanya, Andero Teras, Edna Lúcia Tinoco Ponciano, Ritu Tripathi, Nachiketa Tripathi, Mamta Tripathi, Olja Uhryn, Maria Emília Yamamoto, Gyesook Yoo, Piotr Sorokowski
• Format: Journal
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; Medicine; Neuroscience
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85055280666&origin=inward; http://cmuir.cmu.ac.th/jspui/handle/6653943832/62601
• Institution: Chiang Mai University

© The Author(s) 2018. Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10 794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education, and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density, and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics.