Do we all perceive scent the same way?

I also feel that we perceive scents differently from person to person.

Smell and taste are reactions that vary from person to person. To begin with, when I smell something whether it is a fragrance, a flower, new cut grass or food it is in my opinion that the next person who smells the same item has no idea what it smells like to me. The elevator example is spot on; nobody can imagine how appealing or appalling they may smell in close quarters. An example of how two people smell an odor or fragrance can vary. For instance, my wife and I walk our dogs every morning 3-4 miles. Many times we leave when it is still dark outside. Often there will be a skunk in the area. Sometimes my wife will smell the odor and I will not.

I live in LA and Beverly Hills is very close. Back in the 1980s for those of you who are old enough there was a womans perfume named Georgio. It had a very strong smell and most woman at least here in LA just had to have it. The marketing was great the company that developed and sold it was a very expensive apparel shop in Beverly Hills and it would atomize a tiny bit of the fragrance somewhere outside of the store. Beverly Hills smelt like this fragrance until it ran its course.

Even the legal minds agree that smell is different to everyone. A company that produces a fragrance be it Chanel, Dior or the many others can not patent or copy rite the smell. The only thing that can be protected by law is the company name, name of the fragrance the packaging which includes the box and the bottle design. The actual smell is fair game.

Another mostly overlooked factor can be medications. Some prescription meds can change the way we interpret scents. My personal experience with this involved a bowl of Tabac. All of a sudden it smelled horrid! Rancid is the best description I can give for it. I had several friends and relatives sniff it and they all said it smelled wonderful. The next week, I opened up the bowl and it smelled just like it always had....great! The difference was I had started a new medication that was discontinued due to undesirable side effects. I asked the pharmacist at my next visit and he told me the med can also cause olfactory halucinations and variations in addition to the other side effects I had experienced. Medications and supplements can do some strange things.

First of all, I've read that scent receptors can vary up to 40% between individuals, severely changing how a scent is perceived from person to person. I think it was a textbook but I can't remember for sure so the number could be off, but there is still a significant variation.

Secondly, the sense of smell is the only one directly connected to the brain with no information being processed in between. This goes back to when we were less evolved and relied upon our sense of smell to warn us of dangers, poison, and so on and so forth. So when our brains associate a memory or emotion with a particular scent, it is hard-wired to flip that emotional/memory switch immediately to harken back to the days when the immediacy of detecting a scent could be the difference between life and death.

Finally, in my own personal conjecture, I would imagine context has a lot to do with it. A color can appear differently depending on its surroundings. I grew up eating spicy food, so I'm a bit of a heat seeker, while I know others who didn't and have a much low tolerance. Or imagine the olfactory fatigue of a smell as you are exposed to it over a period of time. This is just anecdotal and I don't have a fully fleshed out theory here, other than it seems like they should be other factors to consider.

Well said. I purchased two soaps and matching A/S with scents that were supposed to be clones of two frags that I enjoy. I was ready to return them as I perceived almost no scent to them until my wife commented that she enjoyed their scent after my shaves, so our scent receptors must vary for these particular soaps and A/S.

I like the term "olfactory fatigue." I have some frags that I enjoy but complain that I can only detect their scent for a couple of hours, although my wife and others detect their scent for six to eight hours. Our scent receptors can become "fatigued" with the constant stimulation of a particular scent, decreasing our perception of it.

Along with olfactory fatigue (which is usually only temporary and can generally be cured just by resting our noses), age will dull our sense of smell, just as it lessens our other senses. Most of us at some point in our lives will take up glasses or contacts to correct our vision, or electronic aids to help our hearing. Unfortunately, there's no gadget to compensate for a weakening sense of smell.

You can, however, improve your ability to recognize distinct scents. The scents themselves may not be as sharp as they were when you were in your twenties, but with practice you can learn to pick them out and give them a name. Start by sniffing all the jars in your spice rack until you can identify them with your eyes closed. Then order some cheap samples of essential oils (or just help yourself to the testers in Whole Foods). Do the same at the perfume counters at the department stores. The clerks are always ready to douse you with the latest frags and even send you home with free samples. Visit basenotes.net or fragrantica.com and look up the scent pyramid for your favorite cologne. Read the reviews to get a sense of what others are smelling. When you've got the lay of the olfactory landscape, borrow a copy of Turin & Sanchez's Guide to Perfume from the library; it's very informative and often very funny. So, even though our schnozzes may grow weaker with time, we can learn to perceive what we do still smell much more distinctly. Hopefully, this will allow us to enjoy our soaps and fragrances until they run out (which for many of us will happen sometime around the end of this century).

Marko;

Your writing leads me down the path to one legendary soap.

Tabac...

I love Tabac

Another mostly overlooked factor can be medications. Some prescription meds can change the way we interpret scents. My personal experience with this involved a bowl of Tabac. All of a sudden it smelled horrid! Rancid is the best description I can give for it. I had several friends and relatives sniff it and they all said it smelled wonderful. The next week, I opened up the bowl and it smelled just like it always had....great! The difference was I had started a new medication that was discontinued due to undesirable side effects. I asked the pharmacist at my next visit and he told me the med can also cause olfactory halucinations and variations in addition to the other side effects I had experienced. Medications and supplements can do some strange things.

Olfactory hallucinations? Talk about a nightmare...in Smell-O-Rama

A fantastic post!

A friend of mine is an amazing chef in the bay area with a keen nose. But has not smelled ultra high quality Cardamom oil. I had him sniff a bottle, I also put some oil on a smelling strip. He couldn't name the ingredient but he recognized the scent. He felt terrible after I told him what the ingredient is, a week later he had no issue recognizing the ingredient. I have been anosmic to certain ingredients but after repeated exposure to the scent, I'm no longer anosmic.

Noses need training Christophe is one of my idols!




https://youtu.be/ysTRp3l2Xpc

https://youtu.be/tCq34wS-1ik

Thanks for the very interesting videos - Christophe seems like a fascinating individual. He's clearly obsessed with scent/fragrance and obsession is the foundation of creative excellence.

I am not sure what my symptom is, be it age or whatever. But, I believe I have always been like this. Smells whether it is a cologne, aftershave, shaving soap, food or jet exhaust fumes (yes jet exhaust fumes and I will explain) tend not to last long with me.

So, food, I have been cooking (not professionally) for a long time. When I am cooking a meal that fills up the kitchen with aroma, the aroma seems to dissipate after a while until I take the lid off of a one pot meal and smell. People who come over generally say “my gosh that smells good when the first enter. But they don’t say it again until we sit down to consume the meal.

During Jack’s war I was in the U.S. Air Force and was constantly on or around aircraft. Many years after I was a Vice President with a major airline. My expertise was finance and tax however, our headquarters was at a major airport and I traveled enormously. I spent a lot of time on the flight line and there was always jet fumes around. But what I remember was driving to work and when I was close to my office I could smell the fumes which made me feel content if you can understand that. But soon I did not notice those fumes regardless where I was on the airport.

I do not wear aftershave when I plan on going out be it in the day or in the evening. I use a non fragrance aftershave balm. But I do wear cologne. Once I put it on I can notice the fragrance for a while but then I can no longer smell it on me. I have had people of the opposite sex compliment the fragrance that I can no longer smell.

My opinion is that our mind begins to take our smell receptors back to natural. Is that a good thing? Yes, I do not want to go around continuously smelling my cologne or the pizza smell that hit me like a hammer in the pizza place I just spent and hour in. So we smell the smell and we eventually go back to natural waiting for the next aroma.

Some smells remind us of the past. For instance, if I don’t plan on going out I splash some Pinaud Lilac Vegetal on my body. Not my face as I have had enough of face on fire. There are many people who can not stand the smell of Lilac Vegetal. It does however, remind me of when I was a kid and the barber would shave the back of my neck after a haircut and splash that on. The jet fumes reminds my of the period when I was in South East Asia or the Middle East but most of all for the years I spent with the airlines which was the best position I ever had.

So there is more to smell than we realize. Normally it appears and then goes and some remind us of days in the past.

Scent is perceived differently from person to person. Here is a link describing some of the genetic factors.No Two People Smell The Same. Personally, I think the title was poorly chosen, since it could be taken to mean two entirely different things.