title: Odor Emotional Quality Predicts Odor Identification.
abstract: It is commonly agreed upon a strong link between emotion and olfaction. Odor-evoked memories are experienced as more emotional compared with verbal, visual, and tactile stimuli. Moreover, the emotional quality of odor cues increases memory performance, but contrary to this, odors are poor retrieval cues for verbal labels. To examine the relation between the emotional quality of an odor and its likelihood of identification, this study evaluates how normative emotion ratings based on the 3-dimensional affective space model (that includes valence, arousal, and dominance), using the Self-Assessment Manikin by Bradley and Lang (Bradley MM, Lang PJ. 1994. Measuring emotion: the Self-Assessment Manikin and the Semantic Differential. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 25(1):49-59.) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson D, Clark LA, Tellegen A. 1988. Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. J Pers Soc Psychol. 54(6):1063-1070.) predict the identification of odors in a multiple choice condition. The best fitting logistic regression model includes squared valence and dominance and thus, points to a significant role of specific emotional features of odors as a main clue for odor identification.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ruhr-University, Universitätsstraße 150, GAFO 04/423, 44801 Bochum, Germany and anne-kathrin.bestgen@rub.de.
authors.forename: Anne-Kathrin
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Bestgen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ruhr-University, Universitätsstraße 150, GAFO 04/423, 44801 Bochum, Germany and Institute for Prevention and Occupational Medicine of the German Social Accident Insurance, Institute of the Ruhr-University Bochum (IPA), Bürkle-de-la-Camp-Platz 1, 44789 Bochum, Germany.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Schulze
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ruhr-University, Universitätsstraße 150, GAFO 04/423, 44801 Bochum, Germany and.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kuchinke
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants / Q000032:analysis*; D055696:Olfactory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D012903:Smell / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: cognition; dominance; emotion; odor identification; olfaction; valence