Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39987152›Full record

ArticleScientific data2025

A standardized lexicon of body odor words crafted from 17 countries.

Antonie L Bierling, Alexander Croy, Fatma Bilem, Leah Bloy, Fiona Yan-Yee Ho, Andres F Jimenez, Pavlína Kyjaková, Mariano Mastinu, Nicole Power Guerra, Uta Sailer and 9 more

Abstract readDataset
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Scientific data, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

19 authors.

Antonie L BierlingDepartment of Clinical Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany. antonie.bierling@uni-jena.de.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3372-1106
Alexander CroyInstitute of Physical Chemistry, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9296-9350
Fatma BilemDepartment for General Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany.
Leah BloyDepartment of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2645-716X
Fiona Yan-Yee HoDepartment of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Andres F JimenezHotchkiss Brain Institute and Department of Psychiatry, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.ORCID http://orcid.org/0009-0005-8657-552X
Pavlína KyjakováInstitute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0081-3717
Mariano MastinuSmell & Taste Clinic, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Nicole Power GuerraSmell & Taste Clinic, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Uta SailerDepartment of Behavioral Medicine, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Annett SchirmerUniversity of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
Edgardo C SilvaCentre for the Study of Labour and Human Factors, University of Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6588-3949
Veikko SurakkaFaculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3986-0713
Lana TakauMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Evelina ThunellDepartment of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Kedarmal VermaSchool of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0001-4237
Barbara R ŻyżelewiczInstitute of Psychology, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland.
Asifa MajidDepartment of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0132-216X
Ilona CroyDepartment of Clinical Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Body odors offer a unique window into the physiological and psychological profile of the emitter. This information, broadcast in nonverbal communication, significantly shapes social interactions. However, effectively digitizing body odors requires a precise framework for perceptual operationalization. Previous research has used a very limited number of verbal terms, such as pleasant, intense, or attractive, which fails to adequately capture qualitative differences. To address this gap, we elicited body odor descriptions from 2,607 participants across 17 countries and 13 languages. All these descriptions are presented here in one dataset, together with a condensed list of 25 body odor words (BOW). Those terms reliably differentiated between body states, and were validated in a separate study with a different group of 155 perceivers. The dataset, available as a web application, provides a novel operationalization of body odor impressions, which is a precondition for studying olfaction in human nonverbal communication, for perception-based digitization of body odors and for comparative studies.

Indexed as

OdorantsOlfactory PerceptionSmellAdultFemaleHumansMaleNonverbal Communication

Identifiers

PMID39987152
PMCPMC11846834

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.