Abstract

This study examined the proposition that the hedonic context within which literature is read interacts with the hedonic quality of the literature to determine aesthetic evaluation. Hedonic context was manipulated using six positive and six negative odors. The hedonic quality of the literature was manipulated by using different combinations of positive or negative style and positive or negative subject matter. Sixteen males and 16 females read each literary work while being exposed to the odors that were either hedonically congruent or hedonically incongruent with the literature. Following each literature reading, subjects provided their evaluations of both the odor and the literature on a six 7-point scale and an eight 7-point scale respectively. As predicted, all aesthetic evaluations were intensified when the odor context and the literature were hedonically congruent. Gender differences suggested that women were generally more sensitive to congruency effects. The results were interpreted in accordance with prior research and principles in experimental psychology and aesthetics.

Introduction

The sense of smell differs from the other senses in its heavy affective associations. For humans, the sense of smell stands out as having more immediate and direct emotional impact. The perception of odor has a strong connection with basic human drives such as food and feeding behavior, sex and reproduction, social interactions, and responses such as awareness of danger. From an evolutionary perspective, olfaction is considered the "oldest sense," and in many ways it remains the most primitive (Purves et al. 1997). The impact of odor is much greater for some individuals than for others. Many factors influence the hedonistic quality of odors for different individuals. These factors include age, gender, temperament, bodily state, and sensitivity to odor detection (Moncrieff 1966). Other possible reasons for different affective responses to odors include their association with emotions and previous experiences. Odors have a tendency to evoke memories of personal experiences or arouse emotions that were felt during previous encounters of exposure to the odor. This idea is sometimes called the Marcel Proust phenomenon, named after the experience of a novelist who dipped a Madeleine biscuit in his linden tea and found that the aroma brought forth a flood of memories and emotions from his childhood (Dodd and Van Troller 1988). Odors aid the recall of emotional memories. It has been demonstrated that odor-evoked memories are more emotional than memories evoked by other sensory stimuli (Herz and Cupchik 1995). Individual preferences for odors may result from the previous emotional association or experiences one has had with, or in the presence of, the odor.

There are strong associations in the brain between olfaction, emotions, and memories. Odors interact with olfactory receptor neurons in the olfactory epithelium that lines the interior of the nose, from which point they are sent directly to the olfactory bulb (Purves et al. 1997). The olfactory tract branches at 12 destinations, two of which include the hippocampus and amygdala in the limbic system (Dodd and Van Troller 1988). The hippocampus is primarily responsible for the formation of long-term memories, and the amygdala is the center of emotional sensation and expression. With such close neural connections of olfaction, emotion, and memory formation, it is not surprising that odors have a great effect on arousing emotions and provoking memories. In contrast, visual and auditory projections synapse primarily on neurons that are relatively distant from the limbic system both in anatomical and functional terms. Moreover, there is evidence that odor-evoked memories may be processed and stored differently than memories associated with the other senses (Richardson and Zucco 1989). The limbic system, one of the most primary and fundamental parts of the brain, was previously known as the rhinencephalon, which literally means the "smell brain." It has been shown that the limbic system serves as the central circuit for emotion, mood, motivation, and sexual behavior, and can be stimulated directly through the sense of smell (Dodd and Van Troller 1988; Purves 1997). This explains how perception of certain odors can be connected with the recollection of specific experiences and how Proust experienced past emotions in the presence of childhood odors. A dramatic feature of this phenomenon is the remarkable extent of detail that may be recalled, even over a long period of time (Aggleton 1999). According to Laird (1935) odors can prompt seemingly forgotten autobiographical information. Moreover, it has been suggested that because of the close neural connections underlying perception of odors and experience of emotions, the connection between smell and emotions may be reciprocal. Odors may provoke mood states and mood states may, in turn, modify the experience of a smell (Dodd and Van Troller 1988).

The present study examines the affect produced by hedonically pleasing or unpleasing odors and their interaction with the aesthetic judgment of literature. Psychological aesthetics is concerned with how people come to appreciate works of art and literature, both intellectually and emotionally (Cupchik et al. 1998). The context in which literature is read can influence the reader and therefore the perception of the text. In other words, the interpretation of a particular piece of literature may be altered by other stimuli surrounding the reader. Aesthetic experience is an emotional process (Fry 1961; Goodman 1968). The emotional context, or mood, of the viewer may be a powerful manipulator of aesthetic judgments. The question is to what extent does literature and the context within which it is read function independently or interactively to influence aesthetic experience. The congruency hypothesis, as referred to by Herz and Cupchik (1993), is based on Lipps's proposition that the hedonic-emotional relationship between a context and the emotional properties of a stimulus will determine aesthetic experience. Odors, as previously stated, have a strong emotion-evoking component. Therefore, the context within which literature is read can be manipulated by odors with different hedonic value. The interaction between context and object perception has been previously addressed with works of art (see Herz and Cupchik 1993).

For this experiment, selected works of literature, which had either a positive or negative style, and a positive or negative mood, were presented in the context of odors which had either a positive or negative hedonic valence. The purpose of the study was to examine the congruency hypothesis with regard to the hedonic experience of odors and literature. In other words, to determine whether the congruency between the hedonic value of the literature and the hedonic value of the odor used to manipulate the context within which the story was read would enhance the experienced emotion. In this experiment, it is hypothesized that aesthetic experience will be most intense when the literary text and the odor-manipulated context are congruent in emotional-hedonic terms (both positive or both negative).

Methods

Subjects

Subjects were 32 students in total, 16 male and 16 female, from the University of Toronto at Scarborough. The subjects' ages ranged from 19 to 25. Subjects volunteered for the experiment, were tested individually, and received $10 compensation for their time.


Materials

Odors. A total of 12 odors were used in this experiment (Table 1). Six odors were selected as hedonically pleasant (Positive) and six odors as hedonically unpleasant (Negative). These odors were obtained from and identified as hedonically pleasant or unpleasant by the International Flavors and Fragrances Company (IFF). Each odor pellet was concealed in a separate opaque bottle and closed off with a cap. Bottles were labeled only with an identification number as presented in Table 1.

Figure 1a-c. Interaction of Odor and Subject Matter for (a) Provoked Images, (b) Feelings Expressed, (c) Bring the Story to Life



Figure 2. Interaction of Style and Odor with Odor Perception

Story Judgment

An analysis of variance was conducted on the eight story judgment measures treating Gender as a between-subjects variable and Odor (Positive, Negative), Subject Matter (Positive, Negative), and Style (Positive, Negative) as within-subjects variables. A significant main effect for Odor was found for the Imagine the Scene, F_{1 , 30} = 6.54, p < .02, and Pleasing, F_{1 , 30} = 10.10, p < .003, measures. Subjects imagined the scene more easily for the positive (M = 5.54) compared with the negative (M = 5.11) odors, and also found the passages more pleasing under the positive (M = 4.27) compared with the negative (M = 3.73) odors.

Significant main effects for Subject Matter were found for the Identify, F_{1 , 30} = 10.49, p< .003, Imagine the Scene, F_{1 , 30} = 6.54, p <.02, Pleasing, F_{1 , 30} = 5.49, p.<.003, Personally Meaningful, F_{1 , 30} = 11.26, p.<.002, and Degree of Involvement, F_{1 , 30} = 6.41, p.<.02, measures. Results in Table 3 show that positive subject matter made it easier to identify with any of the characters and imagine the scene than did the negative subject matter. In addition, positive subject matter made the passages more pleasing and personally meaningful, and encouraged more involvement in comparison with the negative subject matter.

Significant main effects for Style were found for the Absorbed, F_{1 , 30} = 5.00, p < .03, Identify, F_{1 , 30} = 13.18, p < .001, Imagine, F_{1 , 30} = 15.28, p < .001, Sense for the Plot, F_{1 , 30} = 21.00, p < .0001, Pleasing, F_{1 , 30} = 36.50, p < .0001, Personally Meaningful, F_{1 , 30} = 13.67, p < .001, and Involvement, F_{1 , 30} = 15.29, p < .001 measures. The results in Table 3 show that positive style made it easier for subjects to be more absorbed, identify with the characters, imagine the scene, sense the plot, feel pleased, find the passage personally meaningful, and feel more involved compared with the negative style.

A significant interaction of Subject Matter and Odor, F_{1 , 30} = 5.71, p < .02, was found for the Imagine scale. The results in Figure 3 show that subjects imagined the scene best when the subject matter was positive and the odor were positive.

A significant interaction of Subject Matter and Style, F_{1 , 30} = 7.94, p < .009, was found for the Pleasing measure. The results in Figure 4 show that the passages were found most pleasing when both the subject matter and style were positive.

Figure 3. Interaction of Subject Matter and Odor with Story Judgment   Figure 4. Interaction of Subject Matter and Style with Story Judgment

Gender Difference

Odor Perception. A significant interaction of Gender and Odor, F_{1 , 30} = 5.09, p < .03, was found for the Bring the Story to Life measure. The results in Figure 5 show that, for female subjects, positive odors brought the story to life more so than did the negative odors. No differences were found for the males.

Figure 5. Interaction of Gender and Odor with Odor Perception

Story Judgment. Significant interactions of Gender and Odor were found for the Identify, F_{1 , 30} = 5.93, p < .02, Imagine, F_{1 , 30} = 6.54, p < .02, Personally Meaningful, F_{1 , 30} = 7.33, p < .01, and Involvement, F_{1 , 30} = 5.23, p < .03, scales. An examination of the results in Figure 6 shows that males and females differed primarily after smelling negative odors. Male subjects felt more involved with the characters (see Figure 6a), found the stories more personally meaningful (see Figure 6b), and identified with characters more after smelling the negative odors (see Figure 6c). Female subjects displayed the positive effects under the negative odors and also found it more difficult to imagine the scenes (see Figure 6d).

Figure 6 a-d. Interactions of Gender and Odor with Story Judgment

Significant interactions of Gender and Subject Matter were found for the Absorbed, F_{1 , 30} = 5.09, p < .03, and Involved, F_{1 , 30} = 9.75, p < .004, scales. The results in Figure 7 show that males not affected on these scales by differences between positive and negative subject matter. However, females were less absorbed (see Figure 7a) and more detached (see Figure 7b) for negative compared with positive subject matter.

Figure 7 a-b. Interactions of Gender and Subject Matter with Story Judgment

Discussion

The results provide strong support of the congruency hypothesis. Aesthetic judgments and subjective-emotional evaluations were intensified when the emotional tone of the literature (subject matter and style) matched the hedonic context (positive or negative odor). Thus, Lipps's prediction that aesthetic evaluation will be increased when the viewer's mood matches the perceived emotion in the work of art is confirmed if applied to literature in this case.

The results of odor perception revealed that positive odors were not only judged as more pleasant, but were also perceived as more soothing, more energizing, provoked more images, and were able to bring the stories to life. The only scale that was affected equally by positive and negative odors was the number of feelings expressed. Negative odors evoked the same number of feelings as positive odors.

The interaction of odors with subject matter revealed interesting results. Positive subject matter had a hedonically congruent effect with odor when participants were questioned about the number of feelings experiences and the degree to which the odors were able to bring the story to life. However, when the subject matter was negative, the hedonic valence of odors did not affect the number of feelings experienced, or whether the story was brought to life. The same effect was true with positive versus negative style. The hedonically congruent interaction of positive style and positive odor significantly augmented the number of feelings experienced, whereas negative style did not have an effect. This effect is also relevant to story judgment. The congruency of positive subject matter and positive odor had a strong augmentation effect with the ease of imagining the story. However, negative subject matter did not seem to have the same effect.

Although subject matter had a greater effect than style on odor perception, consistent with Cupchik et al.'s hypothesis (1998), the same effect was not observed with story judgment. Style seemed to have an increased number of main effects on story judgment than did subject matter. However, in considering the effects of odor perception, story judgment, and gender differences, Cupchik et al.'s hypothesis that subject matter has relative potency and salience over style, thus affecting both aesthetic perception and preference, is confirmed.

The results of this study demonstrated that congruity effects are modified by sex differences. The data supported the hypothesis that women would be more sensitive than men to instances when the context and literature were congruent. When the odor presented with the story was negative, the odor was better able to bring the story to life and was more involving for women than for men. However, negative odors decreased the perception of the story as personally meaningful for women, whereas it was perceived as more personally meaningful for men when the odor was positive. Furthermore, when odors were negative, women found it more difficult to relate to the characters and found the story as more difficult to imagine. This finding is consistent with previous literature showing that women are more contextually integrated than are men (Maccoby and Jacklin 1974), particularly when the elements of a context are emotional (Herz and Cupchik 1992; Cupchik and Leventhal 1974). As predicted, women were also more affected by emotional context in general than men.

In conclusion, the results from this study illustrate that the hedonic context interacts with the literary style and tone of the story to determine the reader's aesthetic perception. When the odor-manipulated context and the literature tone and style were congruent, aesthetic judgments were intensified. Women were also more affected by congruency and hedonic context in general than were men. The findings are consistent with prior research in aesthetics and experimental psychology, and illustrate the relationship between basic cognitive mechanisms and aesthetic principles in the formation of aesthetic evaluations (Herz and Cupchik 1993).

 

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APPENDIX

Appendix 1: Mood Questionnaire 1. 1 = extremely relaxed, 7 = extremely tense 2. 1 = extremely bored, 7 = extremely stimulated 3. 1 = extremely agreeable, 7 = extremely disagreeable 4. 1 = extremely calm, 7 = extremely excited 5. How sad do you feel? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely) 6. How angry do you feel? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely) 7. How anxious do you feel? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely) 8. Do you feel guilty about something? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely) 9. How happy do you feel? (1= not at all, 7 = extremely) Appendix 2: Odors in Everyday Life Questionnaire 1 = Never, 4 = Often 1. How would you rate the amount of attention you pay to odors relative to other people? 2. How would you rate the importance of odors in your day-to-day life? 3. Do you find yourself in situations where you smell something but most other people do not? 4. Are your food preferences and aversions determined, in part, by the way foods smell? 5. Have odors every brought back memories of places you haven't been to for some time? 6. Are you someone who is sensitive to odors in your environment? 7. Do you use deodorants or antiperspirants? 8. Do you wear perfume or cologne? 9. Do you use scented soaps, body lotions, or shampoos? 10. Do you use scented laundry detergents? 11. Do you use mouthwash? 12. Do you wear the same clothes two days in a row? 13. Do you think about how you smell to other people? 14. Do you smell your clothes before wearing them? 15. Do you tent to notice “off” odors in the refrigerator before others do? 16. Do you like the way you smell without any deodorants / scents? 17. Do you think about how you smell to members of the opposite sex? 18. Can you recognize people by the way they smell? 19. Do you prefer that other people hide their natural body odor? 20. Are you strongly affected when you are near someone who smells badly? 21. Have you ever been attracted to someone partly because of the way they smell? 22. Do you find it offensive when women do NOT shave their armpits? 23. Have you ever found someone's perfume or the scent of a product they use repulsive? 24. Are odors important to your romantic life? 25. Have you ever been attracted to your sexual partner's natural body scent? 26. Do you like the way your partner's armpits smell? 27. Have you ever been sexually aroused by someone's natural body scent? 28. Have you ever been soothed by someone's natural body scent? 29. Can you remember how certain people smell in your mind? 30. Have odors ever brought back memories of people you haven't seen for some time? Appendix 3: Odor Perception Questionnaire #1 (Baseline Odors) 1. How pleasant was the odor? (1 = extremely unpleasant, 7 = extremely pleasant) 2. How soothing was the odor? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely soothing) 3. How energizing was the odor? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely energizing) 4. Did the odor evoke olfactory (odor), visual, auditory, or taste images? (1 = extremely unpleasant, 7 = extremely pleasant) 5. Did the odor evoke feelings? (1 = none at all, 7 = a great many) Odor Perception Questionnaire #2 (Experiment Odors) 1. How pleasant was the odor? (1 = extremely unpleasant, 7 = extremely pleasant) 2. How soothing was the odor? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely soothing) 3. How energizing was the odor? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely energizing) 4. Did the odor evoke olfactory (odor), visual, auditory, or taste images? (1 = extremely unpleasant, 7 = extremely pleasant) 5. Did the odor evoke feelings? (1 = none at all, 7 = a great many) 6. Did the odor bring the story to life? (1 = not at all, 7 = very much so)Appendix 4: Story Judgment Questionnaire 1. How absorbed were you in the story? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely absorbed) 2. Did you perceive the story as possessing a mood or did you experience a mood in response to the story? (1 = experienced a mood, 7 = mood was in the passage) 3. Could you relate to or identify with any of the characters? (1 = not at all, 7 = relate closely) 4. Could you imagine the scene described in the passage? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely easily) 5. Did you have a sense for what was happening (the plot or storyline)? (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely clear sense) 6. How pleasing was the passage to you? (1 = extremely unpleasant, 7 = extremely pleasant) 7. How personally meaningful was the passage to you? (1 = not at all meaningful, 7 = extremely meaningful) 8. Describe your degree of involvement in the passage? (1 = extremely detached, 7 = extremely involved)Appendix 5: Stimulus Materials Used in the Literary Part of the Study POSITIVE SUBJECT MATTER, POSITIVE STYLE Farrington's eyes wandered at every moment in the direction of one of the young women. There was something striking in her appearance. An immense scarf of peacock-blue muslin was wound round her hat and knotted in a great bow under her chin; and she wore bright yellow gloves, reaching the elbow. Farrington gazed admiringly at the plump arm which she moved very often and with much grace; and when, after a little time, she answered his gaze he admired still more her large dark brown eyes. The oblique staring expression in them fascinated him. She glanced at him once or twice and, when the party was leaving the room, she brushed against his chair and said O, pardon! in a London accent. ************************************** The bees buzz from the lilacs at the base of the house and bounce drunkenly against the window. The barn swallows with their delicately forked tail flash their orange breasts and dart and swoop after invisible insects. The dons lie silently, moving only their eyes, conserving their strength as well. We are drowsy and waiting in the summer's heat.POSITIVE SUBJECT MATTER, NEGATIVE STYLE Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of laborers, the shrill litanies of the shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of the stress singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. *************************************** One evening I went into the back drawing room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them. NEGATIVE SUBJECT MATTER, POSITIVE STYLE Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a gray impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling. ********************************* My grandmother gets up and goes for her violin which hangs on a peg inside her bedroom door. It is a very old violin and came from the Ireland of her ancestors, from the crumbled foundations that now dot and haunt her Lochaber's shores. She plays two Gaelic airs. Her hands have suffered stiffness and the lonely laments waver and hesitate as do the trembling fingers upon the four taut strings. She is very moved by the ancient music and there are teas within her eyes. NEGATIVE SUBJECT MATTER, NEGATIVE STYLE Mr. Duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder. A medieval doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a tawny moustache did not quite cover and unamiable mouth. His cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. … He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave alms to beggars and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel. ************************************** MacRae comes down from the truck and leads Scott in wide circle through the wet grass. He goes faster and faster, building up speed and soon both man and horse are almost running. Through the grayness of the blurring, slanting rain they look almost like a black-and-white movie that is badly out of focus. Suddenly without changing speed MacRae hurries up the ramp of the truck and the almost trotting horse follows him, until his hood strikes the tailboard. The he stops suddenly. As the rope jerks taut, MacRae who is now in the truck and has been carried forward by his own momentum is snapped backward; he bounces off the side of the bull, loses his footing on the slimy planking and falls into the wet filth of the truck box's floor.

Journal of Young Investigators. 2003. Volume Seven.
Copyright © 2003 by Valorie Salimpoor and JYI. All rights reserved.