Smells like clean spirit
From the Boston Globe: The sweet smell of morality.
Can a clean smell make you a better person?
That’s the provocative suggestion of a recent study in the journal Psychological Science. A team of researchers found that when people were in a room recently spritzed with a citrus-scented cleanser, they behaved more fairly when playing a classic trust game. In another experiment, the smell of cleanser made subjects more likely to volunteer for a charity.
The findings suggest that simply smelling something clean makes people clean up their behavior—that a smell can provoke a mental leap between cleanliness and morality, making people think differently about the world around them. The authors even suggested that clean smells could be employed as a tool to influence how people act.
The idea that a smell can affect something as complex as ethical behavior seems surprising, not least because smell has long been seen as a “lower” sense, playing on our emotions and instincts while our reason and judgment operate on another plane. But research increasingly shows that smell doesn’t just affect how we feel: It affects how we think, in ways that are just beginning to be understood…
Does it follow that a stench can cause you to do foul, wicked things? That would explain so much.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
February 24th, 2010 at 08:52
Why am I not a bit surprised at this new “revelation” or “finding?” I think our forefathers’ forefathers knew all about scent and smell and how they could affect the brain (the appetite, the sexual urges, decision making, behaviour, etc).
Cleopatra’s slaves concocted all sorts of “scents” so she could entice lovers and influence their behaviour and decision making.
Why do you think lawyers advise their criminal clients to wear fresh, detergent-smelling clothes? Or why do spouses keep/bring soiled clothes of each other?
Why do parents keep old clothing and things of their children, even of dead ones?
I think, when we smell fresh and clean (lemon, mint, citrus) we associate it with happy memories in the farm, or open field thus we feel clean …righteous, helpful and all the virtue-stuff.
I’m just blubbing. I just smelled fried “sapsap.”
February 25th, 2010 at 11:02
I just finished reading PERFUME; story of a murderer by Patrick Suskind. Indeed a scent can somehow persuade a person’s behavior, it envelopes our senses wiring our brains on how to respond with the stench or aroma..I love Jean Baptiste Grenoulle, his big nose is truly amazing..