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PSYCHOLOGIC DIMENSIONS IN THE PERCEPTION OF EVERYDAY ODORS: PLEASANTNESS AND EDIBILITY
Author(s) -
ZARZO MANUEL
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of sensory studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.61
H-Index - 53
eISSN - 1745-459X
pISSN - 0887-8250
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-459x.2008.00160.x
Subject(s) - odor , perception , set (abstract data type) , psychology , dimension (graph theory) , principal component analysis , cognitive psychology , character (mathematics) , statistics , mathematics , computer science , geometry , neuroscience , pure mathematics , programming language
Different studies have reported that when a wide range of odors are assessed at a similar odor intensity, the hedonic dimension (pleasantness) is the most salient. Multivariate statistical methods can be applied to odor profile databases in order to further understand other underlying dimensions in the psychologic perception of everyday smells. One of the few odor profile databases published in the literature using odorant samples representative of ordinary odors was obtained by Chrea and coworkers (2005) . In the present study, this data set was reanalyzed using principal component analysis. The first component was related with the hedonic dimension, while the second component discriminated food versus nonfood odors. These results suggest that ordinary smells could be classified according to their hedonic and edible character, which is of interest to provide some consensus in odor classification as well as to develop low‐dimensional odor maps.PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Different classification schemes of ordinary odors have been proposed in the literature, but none of them is based on the psychologic dimensions of odor perception, which is the proposal of this study. In a reported research, a panel of about 120 subjects rated the hedonic tone of 146 odor descriptors on a numeric scale. Similarly, if a panel is asked to rate the hedonic as well as the edible character of a large set of odors, the results would allow the classification of odor descriptors according to both psychologic dimensions. A scatter plot of these ratings might be regarded as a two‐dimensional map of ordinary odors. The same idea could be extended to other relevant dimensions of olfactory perception space, which might provide the basis to develop low‐dimensional odor maps, as well as to achieve certain consensus in odor classification.