Perception of everyday odors - Correlation between intensity, familiarity and strength of hedonic judgement

In this study, 40 Japanese, 44 German and 39 Mexican women were presented w ith 18 everyday odorants. They were asked to rate them for intensity on a s ix-point scale from not detectable to very strong, for pleasantness on an I i-point scale from -5, to neutral at O, to +5, and for familiarity on a six -point scale from completely unknown to extremely familiar. Consistent posi tive correlations were found between paired rating scores for the three mea sures, and although they were not particularly strong (r(s) range, 0.19-0.6 0), for most odorants all three correlations were significant. Similar resu lts were obtained whether the data were analyzed on an individual or a nati onal basis. Most notable were the consistent positive correlations between perceived intensity and ratings of familiarity and hedonic strength. It is suggested that the perceived intensity of the odorants depended not only on stimulus concentration but probably also on experience-dependent factors.