ArticleBiology letters2024
Is the perception of odour pleasantness shared across cultures and ecological conditions? Evidence from Amazonia, East Africa, New Guinea, Malaysia and Poland.
Article in Biology letters, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Demographic and geographical determinants of human olfactory perception of 909 individuals inhabiting 16 regions.iScience · 2025Article
- A standardized lexicon of body odor words crafted from 17 countries.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Is the perception of odour pleasantness shared across cultures and ecological conditions? Evidence from Amazonia, East Africa, New Guinea, Malaysia and Poland.Biology letters · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
What makes an odour pleasant or unpleasant? The inherent properties of the constituent chemical compounds, or the nose of the beholder, driven by idiosyncratic differences and culture-specific learning? Here, 582 individuals, including Tanzanian Hadza hunter-gatherers, Amazonian Tsimane' horticulturalists, Yali from the Papuan highlands and two industrialized populations (Poles, Malaysians), rated the pleasantness of 15 odour samples. We find considerable similarities in odour assessments across cultures, but our data do not fully support a claim regarding the universality of smell preferences. Despite cross-cultural similarities in olfactory assessments, probably driven by odour properties, we suggest that odour availability in ecological and cultural niches bears an undeniable effect on human odour preferences.
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