Global Study of Social Odor Awareness

Chemical Senses. 2018. Vol. 43. No. 7. P. 503–513.

Butovskaya M.

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.

Keywords: culture, smell, olfaction